State Cuts Could Reach Tenured Faculty at CSUN : Education: Gov. Wilson’s 11% budget reduction, if implemented, would eliminate all part-time instructors.

The state’s worsening budget outlook means that tenured faculty at Cal State Northridge may follow part-time instructors to the chopping block and that some academic disciplines may have to be shut down altogether, officials said last week.

Campus officials, including outgoing President James W. Cleary, had previously said that laying off or not rehiring most of its temporary and part-time instructors would enable CSUN to maintain its fiscal balance.

But that scenario changed when Gov. Pete Wilson said Thursday he would not back down from his proposal to cut spending on higher education by 11%. CSUN officials had been expecting the school’s state revenues would drop by 8% and that fees would go up by 40%.

Under Wilson’s proposed cuts in higher education, CSUN would not be able to afford to retain any of its more than 600 temporary instructors--who comprise more than one-third of the school’s teaching staff. Such a sweeping reduction would fall disproportionately on those departments that rely more heavily on working professionals who teach part time.

More than half of the teachers of music, art and drama, for example, would be eliminated. About 54% of the instructors in the School of the Arts during 1991-92 were non-tenured faculty, university records show.

By contrast, only about 29% of the instructors in the School of Science and Mathematics were so-called temporary faculty. The rest were career academicians, either full professors or those working their way up the tenure ladder.

The School of Communication, Health and Human Services, which includes disciplines such as journalism and physical therapy, also would be hit hard by an across-the-board layoff of non-tenured instructors. Fifty-three percent of the instructors in those departments this year would be subject to losing their jobs.

By comparison, only 35% of the instructors in the School of Business Administration and Economics this year would be vulnerable.

Cleary has predicted that more than 800 of the 5,600 classes normally offered on the campus will be eliminated for the fall semester.

But more classes would have to be stripped from the schedule if the 11% budget cut is implemented and all of the school’s temporary instructors are lost, campus administrators said.

Once the temporary employees are gone, any remaining budget shortfall would have to be made up by laying off tenured professors, said Elliot Mininberg, vice president for administration and university advancement.

Because salaries and benefits make up about 91% of the school’s approximately $100-million budget, that is where most of the budget cuts have to occur, he said.

“The heart and core of this campus rests in our permanent tenured faculty,” Mininberg said. “Intrude on that and you intrude on the state’s future. But there is a limit to which we can hold them harmless.”

Systemwide, 340 tenured and tenure-track faculty members from 20 CSU campuses have been targeted for layoff so far, CSU officials said.

Although the extent of the cuts is unknown--awaiting a final budget agreement between Wilson and the Legislature--the 1,600 or so CSUN students preparing for careers in the arts will find it especially difficult to get classes needed to graduate.

Laying off the 100 temporary instructors in the School of the Arts would leave 80 tenured teachers, school records show.

As a result, theater majors, for example, would have to fight for spots in the eight productions planned for next year. In past years, theater majors had the opportunity to satisfy graduation requirements by participating in one or more of the 14 or so productions staged annually.

It appears that the 1,700 majors in the School of Science and Mathematics who are studying disciplines such as math, chemistry, physics and biology will have a better chance of weathering the current economic storm.

Eliminating the 45 temporary faculty who taught courses in those disciplines this year would still leave 110 professors, records show.

The reason is that more science and math courses than music and art courses are taught by career academicians, said Paul Klinedinst, chairman of the School of Science and Mathematics.

“In our school, most of the full-time faculty are heavily into laboratory research as well as teaching,” Klinedinst said. “So most of them view their job here as taking up eight to 10 hours a day, five or six days a week, 12 months a year.”

By contrast, students of the arts rely much more on courses taught by working artists, musicians and theater professionals, said Philip Handler, chairman of the School of the Arts.

“We have one of the largest arts departments in the CSU system” and still would find it impractical “to hire full-time faculty for all of the instruments of the orchestra,” Handler said.

Such disparities have prompted the faculty to question whether across-the-board cuts are fair.

In addition, some academicians on campus charge that the school’s athletics program--which serves between 350 and 400 students--is not shouldering its share of the budget-cutting pain.

All of the coaches of the school’s 18 sports teams are non-tenured instructors, athletic department business manager Debby DeAngelis said. But so far, none are targeted for layoff, she said.

Arts Dean Handler said: “I know what kind of extra support the arts programs need and what kind of extra support athletics needs. But I get frustrated and impatient because we get less extra support than athletics.”

Campus administrators argue that sports programs are an essential component of campus life and can raise money through gate receipts and concessions.

Besides, said Mininberg, “we are just not heavily invested in athletics” compared to other schools of similar size.

The $3.8-million annual athletics budget comes mostly from state money and student fees, with an approximately $500,000 annual subsidy from the CSUN Foundation.

The grumbling about the amount of money spent on athletics--heard from campus deans, department heads and rank-and-file faculty--is likely to escalate should state cuts force layoffs of tenured faculty at CSUN.

Once temporary instructors are eliminated, campus administrators said they will look at which of the school’s more than 60 academic departments could be shut down or consolidated.

Those decisions will be based on, among other factors, whether courses are required for graduation, and whether they are available at nearby campuses, Mininberg said.

Although faculty representatives would participate in talks over what might be cut, the final decision will rest with the campus president, Mininberg said.

Cleary, who is retiring at the end of the summer after 23 years as the head of the Northridge campus, will make all of the budget decisions affecting the fall semester, Mininberg said.

The new campus president, Blenda J. Wilson, chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn, has said little about any specific plans for the campus, largely because the budget issue is unsettled, campus administrators and faculty said.

But greeting Wilson will likely to be thousands of unhappy students unable to get the classes they want.

More than 29,000 students were accepted for the fall semester when admissions were closed in February, said Lorraine Newlon, CSUN’s director of admissions and records.

But there will be room in classes for only about 26,000 of those students and, depending on the severity of the final budget cut, potentially even fewer than that, Newlon said. The result is that fewer students will be able to attend school full time, she said.

Adding to the scheduling nightmare, students will not know which classes have been canceled until they begin registering for classes by telephone July 29. The fall class schedule was printed long before the current budget crunch was known.

All this talk makes acting Vice President of Academics Don Bianchi nervous. Bianchi said he fears that new and returning students who hear about campus troubles will decide to stay away for the fall semester. That would reduce revenues and compound campus troubles.

“Last fall, faculty kept putting students into classes as best they could, and I anticipate this will continue,” Bianchi said. “I want students to show up.”

Departments

Ranking of Cal State Northridge departments by percentage of instructional staff who are non-tenured. Administration and supervision: 75% Communicative disorders: 68% Journalism: 66% Computer science: 63% Music: 59% Home economics: 57% Health science: 56% Art (2-dimensional media): 55% Child development: 55% Mechanical/chemical engineering: 54% Foreign language and literature: 51% Religious studies: 50% Office administration / business education: 50% English: 49% Art (general studies): 47% Radio / film / TV: 45% Physical education / kinesiology: 44% Psychology: 44% Anthropology: 43% Sociology: 43% Art history: 43% CIAM engineering: 43% Accounting: 43% Pan-African studies: 42% Secondary education: 42% Management: 42% Special education: 41% Elementary education: 41% Chicano studies: 40% Electrical / computer engineering: 39% Philosophy: 38% Economics: 36% Geological sciences: 35% Theater: 35% Recreation and leisure studies: 33% Art (3-dimensional media): 33% Educational psychology: 33% Biology: 31% Physics and astronomy: 32% Chemistry: 30% Mathematics: 30% Speech communication: 30% Management science: 28% Marketing: 27% Business law: 26% History: 25% Geography: 21% Finance / real estate: 18% Social / philosophical foundations: 0% Figures are as of February, 1992

Source: California Faculty Assn.