Steeper Cuts May Eliminate Some Majors at CSUN : Education: The governor’s insistence on an 11.3% spending reduction is causing campus officials to consider what fields of study to trim.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed budget cuts to higher education would force Cal State Northridge administrators to consider merging or eliminating some academic subjects in the coming school year, campus President James W. Cleary said through a spokeswoman Thursday.

The continuing state budget stalemate has almost killed hope that CSUN will escape with an anticipated 8% budget cut--a reduction that would force elimination of one-third of the teaching staff and the cancellation of hundreds of fall semester classes.

The governor’s continuing insistence on an 11.3% reduction for the California State University system has forced CSUN officials and faculty to begin talk of eliminating the smallest and most specialized of its more than 60 academic majors, as well as laying off professors who teach in those disciplines, campus officials said.

Adding 3.3% to the 8% cuts already planned requires a look at cutting entire subjects, or vertical cuts, rather than simple across-the-board reductions, CSUN spokeswoman Kaine Thompson said.

The campus has provisions to eliminate areas of study, but they are time-consuming and would not likely begin until after incoming President Blenda Wilson arrives Sept. 1, campus officials said.

So far, campus officials said they do not have a list of majors being considered for cancellation.

Cleary--who is retiring at the end of August after heading CSUN for 23 years--has the power to lay off professors and eliminate majors and school departments. But to illustrate the dramatic effect of the cuts, Cleary on Thursday declared he would refuse to implement budget cuts higher than 11.3%, and if asked to would instead turn over budget control to CSU officials, Thompson said.

“Should cuts go deeper, the president feels it will damage the institution and he will turn it over to the chancellor’s office and the board of trustees,” Thompson said. “Once we have to make vertical cuts, then the integrity of the institution will be compromised.”

CSUN officials have for several weeks prepared for state cuts of 8% with across-the-board reductions campuswide, resulting in an expected savings of about $12.7 million.

But hope is dimming for those plans as Wilson and the state Legislature remain deadlocked on cuts to K-12 schools and community colleges for the 1992-93 fiscal year, which began Wednesday.

That means cuts to balance the state budget will likely come from other areas, such as higher education, CSU government affairs spokesman Scott Plotkin said.

The cuts will be felt even more by CSUN’s academic departments, which received a special 3.5% budget supplement during the 1991-92 school year.

With that supplement gone, academic departments face the prospect of losing all of their non-tenured instructors, who make up more than 600 of the school’s 1,400 or so teachers.

Under Wilson’s proposal, those cuts would still not be enough to balance the budget for academics, which accounts for about $70 million of the school’s total $100-million or so annual budget.

“We are numb,” said Carolyn Ellner, dean of the School of Education. “After so much pain you just go into shock and pass out.”

In considering where else to cut, CSUN administrators have said they will look at the size of academic departments, how many students are majoring in subjects, the number of students graduating and whether departments offer courses required to meet general education requirements, said Richard E. Gunther, chairman of the management science department and chairman of the school’s Educational Resources Committee.

“Some programs on campus are strong,” Gunther said. “Some programs are not so strong and those are the ones we are going to be questioning. If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that we are questioning things we should be questioning and that we should have been questioning a long time ago.”

To prepare for those decisions, school officials have compiled computer lists showing the number of students declared in each major, as well as the number of graduates during the past three years.

Cleary has pledged to involve faculty in the decisions, which probably would not go into effect until the spring semester.

Even so, CSUN philosophy professor and local California Faculty Assn. leader Will Forthman said he will oppose any elimination of programs and urged his colleagues to do the same.

“The faculty supporting vertical cuts are a minority--those hoping their area will be the one spared,” Forthman said. “That way, they would save themselves across-the-board cuts at the expense of somebody else.”