CSUN Could Lose Dozens of Majors Under Proposed Cuts : Education: Other measures suggested by campus leaders include merging departments and requiring students to choose disciplines earlier.

Dozens of academic majors at Cal State Northridge would be dropped, departments would be merged and students would be required to declare majors earlier and move more quickly toward graduation under a series of harsh cost-cutting measures circulated Friday.

Faculty and student leaders at the 30,000-student campus reacted mildly to the measures under study by the CSUN administration, but they predicted that those directly affected might object as the plan’s contents become more widely known. Most leaders said they had a role in preparing the proposed cuts, which together represent a worst-case scenario.

Significantly, the proposed criteria for dropping academic disciplines were set to bypass three majors with highly politicized constituencies--Chicano studies, Afro-American studies and women’s studies.

But dozens of other majors with fewer than 40 undergraduate students or 10 graduate students are targeted for possible elimination, including dance, business education, civil and structural engineering, French and German culture, statistics, astrophysics, geophysics and clinical psychology.

University administrators said the depth of the cuts will be determined by the outcome of the fierce battle under way in Sacramento between Gov. Pete Wilson, who wants to raise student tuition by 40% starting this fall, and the Legislature, which is resisting such a big increase.

It would cost $109 million to keep the campus operating at present levels in the fiscal year that begins July 1, administrators said. If Wilson prevails, that budget would have to be cut by 3.5%.

If there are no tuition increases and state revenue falls as dramatically as some state officials expect, the CSUN budget could be cut by as much as 9.5%, administrators say.

The proposed cuts were contained in a memo from Donald E. Bianchi, acting vice president for academic affairs, to the university’s 49 department heads. He said the list of cuts was a “starting point for extensive discussions that will precede any final decisions.”

In addition to possibly dropping majors with fewer than 40 students--which includes nearly half of the university’s 168 majors--Bianchi suggested requiring that students declare a major in their second year.

The memo also suggests more than $3 million in administrative cuts, including the merger of departments with fewer than 10 faculty members, which would reduce the number of departments from 49 to 35.

Also proposed is combining some of the university’s eight schools. Possible merger candidates mentioned are the School of the Arts with the School of Humanities, the School of Education with the School of Communication, Health and Human Services, and the School of Engineering and Computer Science with the School of Science and Mathematics.

An earlier declaration of majors is needed, Bianchi said, because too many students “consume resources as they unduly shop around” for a major while slowly accumulating the 124 units needed for graduation. The average CSUN graduate has been in school 6 1/2 years, administrators said.

Many students “just hang around taking courses for years,” said Albert Baca, Faculty Senate president. “At other times, that would be all right. But now they are taking up seats others need to have.”

David Weiss, Associated Students president, endorsed the proposal to require sophomores to declare a major, calling it a step in the right direction.

He said many students remain undecided about a major and choose courses casually, accumulating “150, 200 or even 250 units before graduation. That wastes resources.”

But Weiss said that if students are pressured to move more quickly toward graduation, they should also be given better academic counseling.

He said that many students take courses that they mistakenly think count toward their major “and only later find out they were wrong. A lot of students feel they can’t get good advice from the faculty.”

Weiss said he had heard no complaints from students by late Friday, but he predicted that as the plan circulates next week, “some students will be pretty upset if they are directly affected.”

Nonetheless, Weiss said he thinks the proposed cost-cutting measures are better than across-the-board cuts in which every department would be required to reduce expenditures equally.

Baca predicted little opposition from the university’s 1,200 full-time faculty members, few, if any, of whom would lose their jobs.

“Everyone seems to realize that cuts must be made, and many of these proposals originated with us as long ago as December,” he said.

Baca said that the proposed administrative cuts would place heavy workloads on remaining administrators and would “slow down the flow of paperwork on campus. Everything will take a little longer to accomplish.”

Jorge Garcia, dean of the School of Humanities, predicted that at least some of the university’s 900 part-time instructors would be laid off as departments are merged and majors eliminated.

He predicted that some students will go to court to try to prevent the university from dropping their majors.