Okay, the financial problems of the California State University system, in particular, look all too easy to address. As someone who has taught many places over many years, I feel it is safe to say that the CSU — Cal Poly in particular — has lost its way and forgotten it’s basic mission and pursued a program of questionable expansion that has put the universities at the brink of disaster.
Simply put, the clearly stated mission of education in California is: “to advance and extend knowledge, learning, and culture.”
If you take a look deeper, one can only wonder how the CSU administration’s most recent actions are consistent with their mission? Here are a couple of obvious conflicts :
1) ARE ALL JOBS EQUALLY RELEVANT IN TODAY’S ECONOMIC REALITIES?
Each of the three functional units (faculty, staff and administration) of a university are being treated as being equally central to the university mission but each area contributes differentially and some functions are clearly more central to the core objectives than others.
Observation:
A) Clearly, although every individual employee values their own job, not all jobs have an equal contribution to the university mission. To meet the budget, some jobs can be combined while others could be eliminated as a luxury of a previous era.
B) Currently, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has taken the approach by reducing the number of instructors as their quick and easy solution. However, this has caused some obviously unforeseen consequences resulting in the closing of classes, reduction in courses and delaying graduation. One Dean was quoted by a student as saying in desperation that they would sign anything (substitutions, et cetera) in order to get a student to graduation. Although this is admirable on one level, is this the was we should be doing business?
C) One work group has grown unchecked for almost three decades … and just since the 1980’s alone, Cal Poly’s administration has grown exponentially and one wonders what effect — if any — this dramatic increase in warm bodies has had on meeting the educational mission. There are titles and positions that didn’t exist just 20 years ago ( provosts, vice provosts, vice presidents, etc.) I can’t help but wonder if returning to the 1980 staffing levels would mitigate the entire budget deficit all by itself?
2) SHARE THE PAIN?
An across the board approach to cost savings is the strategy being employed by the CSU and Cal Poly in budget cuts. Before we look at this question, I have to ask: who is more needed than a professor in meeting the educational mission?
Observation:
In an other worlds, when costs seem out of bounds, the solution most often presented successfully is ‘consolidation’ first, elimination second. Here are a few ideas:
A) Couldn’t the administrative offices of a university run more than one university?
B) Shouldn’t university executives be writing their own emails and letters as happens in the rest of the university? Aren’t floors of secretaries a relic from a bygone era?
C) Shouldn’t University Executive perks (company cars, car allowances, expense reports, special health care benefits and junkets) be eliminated first?
D) Why shouldn’t every administrator ( many hold Ph.D.’s) be assigned one class to keep in touch with what is going on within the university setting? I have made this suggestion many times before. We need to get more value from the assets we already have and if we can’t, then they should go.
E) As an aside, many university presidents have been rightfully accused of pretending to be royalty… this sets a bad example… one wonders why any university president should have university employees over to his home to do any home improvement projects? Most would also question the educational purpose of a wine cellar, the President’s car allowance, and what many might call extravagant living. Here’s a small peek.
“ Carly Baker, the president’s wife, championed construction of a modern and pricey kitchen for the stadium boxes, including the president’s suite, so that his private chef can prepare gourmet meals during a portion of the six annual home games. Cost of the extreme kitchen? Between $300,000 and $400,000…”
As you can see, meeting the educational mission and making sensible cost reductions are not conceptually difficult… it’s not rocket science and — by the way — reductions starts at the top.
Roger Freberg
