CSUN Plans to Drop 90 Classes for Spring Term : Education: Freshmen and sophomores will be hardest hit. Department chairmen had held off on cuts, waiting for a state windfall that never came.

Students at Cal State Northridge will have about 90 fewer classes to choose from this spring due to the delayed impact of state budget cuts announced in the fall.

Administrators say lower division students--freshmen and sophomores--will be the hardest hit because some introductory classes will be the first to be eliminated. In most cases, advanced courses and seminars will be preserved so that seniors can graduate this year.

“For any given student, the section that we cut may be the one that best fits into their schedule,” said William Hosek, dean of the School of Business Administration and Economics, which will lose about 20 class sections. “We’re going to have some unhappy students, there’s no question about that.”

Many departments on campus had made minimal cutbacks in the fall. Some department chairmen said they held off, hoping for a windfall, but most said they felt it was unfair to discontinue fall classes after students had already registered for them.

However, the picture, while far from rosy, is not as bad as many administrators had feared in August when state cutbacks and declining lottery revenues caused the California State University system to slice $6.6 million from the CSUN budget. Faculty travel was immediately halved, supply and repair budgets were reduced significantly and the main library--the Oviatt--was closed on Sundays.

The original CSU estimates proved somewhat more dire than reality and adjustments were made at CSUN so that many of the trims could be made in areas other than academics, such as building maintenance. By mid-semester, the Oviatt Library had been reopened on Sundays.

Still, administrators said that the cuts put the institution in a vulnerable position.

“We’re managing to keep our head above water, but if this continues on, this will have a very deteriorating effect,” said Bob Suzuki, vice president for academic affairs. “It’s not real visible, but it’s the kind of thing that will just eat away at an institution.”

Of the seven schools on campus, the School of Humanities will take the largest cut this spring, losing about 40 class sections. Four of the remaining schools--Science and Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science, Arts and Education--hope to avoid loss of any classes by trimming their budgets elsewhere.

Philip Handler, dean of the School of Arts, said he held off on hiring in the summer, anticipating that the school’s financial situation might be worse than expected. Now he says he’s glad he did.

“I decided it would be less demoralizing to save some positions and not give everything out for the fall,” he said.

But Carolyn Ellner, dean of the School of Education, said retaining all the spring course offerings may mean an end to faculty participation in public schools for this year. State law requires instructors of educational methods to take time out from teaching and make direct contact with public schools once every three years.

“Everything else has been cut to the bone and we still may have to cut classes,” Ellner said. “We’re resisting to the last minute, but we’ll have to see how it works out.”