CSU Chancellor Warns of Cuts in Enrollment, Courses : Education: In Fullerton address, he says he will tell governor that the system cannot serve the same number of students or more next year without more funds.

California State University Chancellor Barry Munitz said Thursday that the 20-campus system has been so crippled by this year’s round of state budget cuts that it will be unable to serve the same number of students or more next year without significantly more money.

Failing that, Munitz said CSU--the nation’s largest university system with 375,000 students--must consider slashing enrollment and courses at most campuses. In effect, he said, the university will not be able to live up to its mandate under the state Master Plan for Higher Education to offer low-cost, quality education to the top third of California high school graduates.

“If we are to be the gateway to socioeconomic mobility in this state, we have to have the resources to do it,” Munitz said. “If the state of California wants us to maintain our master plan commitment without the necessary resources, we have to call a halt to enrollment (growth). . . .

“We cannot continue to bear a greater and greater burden without fundamentally affecting the quality of the education we deliver,” he told more than 50 faculty and students gathered for his address to Cal State Fullerton’s Academic Senate.

Although state revenue this year is falling far below projections, increasing the likelihood of additional belt-tightening at state-funded institutions, Munitz vowed to take the same message to Sacramento. He said the new secretary of education, Maureen DiMarco, has promised to arrange a special meeting with Gov. Pete Wilson, himself and top officials for the University of California and state community college systems.

Amy Albright, DiMarco’s spokeswoman in the Office of Child Development and Education in Sacramento, confirmed Thursday that DiMarco had spoken with Munitz about the funding difficulties facing higher education and was trying to arrange a meeting with the governor.

“We are going to have to ask the legislators and the governor: Do they want to continue low-cost, high-quality university education, which has been a hallmark of this state?” Munitz said. “Because right now, its survival is in serious jeopardy.”

Munitz ticked off the cuts that the 20 campuses have faced this year because state funding for the system fell $60 million below last year’s level, and $414 million below what CSU officials had sought to meet projected enrollment growth and increases in the cost of personnel, equipment and maintenance:

- 868 non-faculty staff positions were eliminated.

- About 1,000 full-time instructors were laid off and another 2,000 part-time lecturers were not re-hired.

- More than 3,800 courses were not scheduled or were canceled.

- About $12.5 million in equipment replacement funds were eliminated by the governor.

- No money went toward an estimated $350 million in deferred maintenance costs to fix everything from roofs to cooling and heating systems and elevators across the system.

- Each campus has cut its library budget significantly, and systemwide, all are scrambling to deal with another $1 million in unexpected sales tax costs since the state began charging sales tax for periodicals and books.

“You cut all of that and you have very badly damaged the ability of the institution to deliver quality education,” Munitz said. “We simply cannot endure any more cuts.”

The Cal State system, indeed all of higher education, is girding for a boom in the number of college-age students. By the year 2005, as many as 550,000 eligible students are projected to be seeking entry to the Cal State system, university officials said.

Since 1980, the Cal State system has seen a 19.5% increase in enrollment, while funding per student has dropped about 9%, according to a university spokeswoman. The system’s share of the state budget pie has dropped from 4.6% to 3.59% over the same period.

Munitz said the answer is not increasing student fees, which were raised 20% this year to about $936 annually for full-time students.

“Our students and their families cannot afford to pay more,” he said. “And secondly . . . that money just goes to replace state funds that have been taken away.”

Munitz told Cal State Fullerton faculty that his strategy for the coming fiscal year and beyond is threefold:

- Make clear to the governor and state Legislature that the system cannot continue to accept new students, much less serve those currently at Cal State campuses without more funds.

- Give more autonomy and financial flexibility to each of the 20 campuses.

- Increase private fund-raising efforts and public-private partnerships with industry.

“No institution has built excellence on state tax dollars alone,” Munitz told them. “We won’t survive in this (economic) climate even if we do get our fair share from the Legislature.”

Munitz was at Cal State Fullerton on Thursday to announce the creation of a statewide Center for Collaboration for Children at the campus. The center aims improve links in the training of teachers, social workers, counselors and health professionals throughout the Cal State system that will emphasize the needs of the whole child. The chancellor’s office has given a $100,000 grant in state lottery funds to help establish the center.

The idea is to give the teachers, nurses and counselors of the future the tools to work together to help a student who may be two grades behind in school and whose family is on welfare and awaiting housing, said professor Sid Gardner, who will be director of the new center.

“We would probably get a better fix on why that youngster is having problems in school . . . if the teacher can reach out and work with somebody who knows the family and what it’s going through,” Gardner said.

Asked how he could afford to fund new programs at a time when others were being cut back, Munitz noted that the center already has received significant grants from private foundations and the Cal State Fullerton campus. Given that the training programs it devises will be interdisciplinary and spread throughout the Cal State system, Munitz said the investment of $100,000 is small compared to the “enormous impact” the center will have.