CSU Plans to Lay Off 2,200 Unless State Helps : Education: Chancellor says tenured faculty, staff will lose jobs if funds are not provided. He calls for tuition hike, early retirement and capping budget cuts at 6%.

The financially strapped California State University system is planning to lay off as many as 2,200 employees in the coming school year--including an unprecedented 340 tenured and tenure-track faculty--unless the state provides more funds than expected, Chancellor Barry Munitz said Friday.

Anticipating an 8% drop in state general revenues--about $130 million--Munitz said he authorized layoff notices to be sent out as early as Monday to meet legal requirements for 120-day advance warning. But he said the jobs of the 340 tenure and probationary professors could be saved for at least a year if the Legislature and governor limit Cal State budget cuts to 6% and approve a 40% student fee increase and an early retirement program for employees.

“We are shoving this institution slowly but surely to an abyss from which it will take a generation to recover,” Munitz warned in a telephone news conference after his meeting with the 20 Cal State campus presidents at the system’s Long Beach headquarters.

The system employs about 36,000 people. Of the 2,194 likely to receive layoff notices, 1,345 are teachers, 740 are on non-teaching staffs and 109 are senior administrators, Munitz said.

The layoff numbers include an estimated 1,005 part-time professors throughout the system. The 340 tenured and tenure-track teachers would be let go from 11 campuses: Cal State Los Angeles, Cal State Bakersfield, San Diego State, Cal State Fresno, Cal State Sacramento, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Long Beach, Humboldt State, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Chico and Cal State Fullerton.

Course offerings would drop as a result, which could cause student enrollment to decline significantly, Munitz added.

In the 1991-92 school year, the Cal State system had about 362,000 full- and part-time students or, in the jargon used by planners, the equivalent of 269,000 full-timers. Next year, the full-time equivalent is expected to drop to 244,000, the chancellor said.

Munitz did not detail the cuts by campus. But some campuses have formed retrenchment plans, most dramatically at San Diego State, where nine entire academic departments--including anthropology and religious studies--are targeted for closure. Others, such as Cal State Los Angeles, are finalizing plans, officials said Friday.

According to Munitz, department closings could be avoided next year if the state meets the conditions on higher fees, early retirement and revenue trims no deeper than 6%. Another condition, he said, would be greater managerial flexibility for Cal State, which complains it is too constrained by legislative rules.

Asked about the likelihood that tenured faculty and departments would be spared for at least a year, the chancellor replied: “We don’t know.” But he added: “We are going to battle wherever and however possible to make sure our case is heard.”

An early retirement program seems likely to win approval. Opposition is weakening to the proposed 40% fee increase, which would bring annual fees to $1,308, excluding room and board. But the level of general revenue support remains worrisome, Munitz said.

His statements Friday were the latest gloomy predictions in Cal State’s annual budget battle, involving not only the governor and legislators but also student and employee lobbyists.

Terry Jones, vice president of the California Faculty Assn., said the professors’ union might challenge the layoff notices in court as an unfair labor practice. “We have serious problems with them going ahead unilaterally with this . . . action,” he said.

Jones said the Munitz administration has not talked to employee unions about such alternatives as labor groups lending funds to the system or taking pay cuts. “We’ve been trying to get them to sit down with us,” Jones said.

Munitz said he has received no encouragement from unions about a pay cut to save jobs.

The chancellor said he ordered the campuses to plan for an 8% cut in general revenue funds even though some state officials project drops twice or three times as large. General revenue funds account for about 80% of Cal State’s budget.

The retrenchment is hitting some campuses harder than others, depending on their number of part-time employees and whether they have a cushion of extra money for enrollment growth.

At Cal State Long Beach an advisory panel has recommended elimination of the chemical engineering department, along with master’s degree programs in some foreign languages, counseling, education and education administration. Undergraduate degrees in some nursing specialties will also be discontinued. Six faculty members with tenure and a probationary faculty member were targeted for layoffs, in addition to at least 100 clerks, campus mail carriers, groundskeepers, custodians and financial aid staff.

At Cal State Los Angeles, President James Rosser declined to reveal specific cutback figures until his administration finishes consultation with faculty and union groups. He said he did not expect any departments to be closed.

Cal State Fullerton would cut about 400 of the university’s 2,000 employees, including 80 faculty positions. Because the Fullerton campus has historically relied heavily on contract or part-time faculty, only five to 10 of those positions would involve tenured or tenure-track faculty, President Milton A. Gordon estimated. Fullerton recently notified 80 workers, including clerks and other part-time workers, that their contracts would not be renewed.

The expected cut of 300 Fullerton classes would add at least one semester to the time it takes students to earn degrees, which is already more than five years at most campuses, officials said.

“I feel just horrible,” Gordon said. “I’ve been in education now over 30 years, and I never thought we would be at (this) point.”

Munitz stressed that voters’ approval this week of Proposition 153, which would allow issue of $900 million in bonds for higher education construction projects, will not prevent the layoffs. Those bond funds cannot be used for operating budgets, he said.

Times staff writers Kristina Lindgren in Orange County and Jill Gottesman in Long Beach contributed to this story.