State University System Plans to Lay Off 2,200

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.

Cal State Fullerton would lose 400 of its 2,000 employees, including 80 faculty positions, under the plan. But President Milton A. Gordon said this very preliminary budget would affect only five or 10 tenured or tenure-track faculty at the most. The end result, however, may mean slashing enrollment by 2,000 students and cutting as many as 300 classes.

At Cal State Long Beach, six tenured professors and one probationary faculty member have been targeted for layoffs, as were at least 100 clerks, campus mail carriers, groundskeepers, custodians and financial aid staffers. A campus advisory panel also has recommended eliminating some degree programs.

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.

“If the full fee increase is not approved, things could be much worse,” Gordon warned.

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 Los Angeles, President James Rosser declined to reveal specific cutback figures until his administration finishes consultation with faculty and union groups.

“I would not feel comfortable at this point in time,” he said Friday, adding however that he did not expect any full departments to be shuttered.

Likewise, Fullerton’s president was reluctant to discuss potential cuts in staff, students or classes, since there remain so many unknowns. For example, about half the university’s 800 faculty members could be eligible for a sweetened early retirement package. If a significant number of them did retire, that would dramatically alter many of the budget calculations, Gordon said.

“All of this is just a planning scenario,” Gordon emphasized of the 8% plan, which assumes a cut of about $8 million in the university’s $110-million budget. “I don’t want people to be going off half-cocked.”

However, university administrators already have furloughed 80 part-time workers, including clerks, musical accompanists and others who were notified May 29 that their contracts would not be renewed.

Last year, Fullerton was forced to cut 12% from its budget of $125 million. That resulted in the loss of 175 part-time faculty members and elimination of 250 classes. Students in the business school were limited to 14 units and many of the university’s 25,000 students were unable to get the classes they needed for their degree requirements.

This fall, an 8% budget reduction would force the university to cut 300 classes and trim enrollment by about 2,000 students, or the equivalent of 1,355 full-time students carrying 10 or more units. That, said Gordon, would mean a full-time student would have to attend the university at least one extra semester to get a degree.

“I feel just horrible,” said the president, who took over at Fullerton in August, 1990, just as an earlier round of budget cuts were imposed on the CSU system. “I’ve been in education now over 30 years, and I never thought we would be at a point of reducing . . . by the amounts we are now talking about. . . .

“At Fullerton, we’re talking about in two years reducing our budget by 20%. We’re reducing class sections, faculty and staff. We used up our equipment money last year just to save classes. . . .

“Looked at in the long term, if the budget situation does not turn around quickly, when the community wants more business leaders, scientists, engineers and teachers, those professionals won’t be there,” Gordon said. “Somehow or other, education has to be re-established as a significant priority in the state of California.”

Times staff writer Jill Gottesman in Long Beach contributed to this story.