CSU Campus Will Invite Businesses to Fund Classes : Ventura: With shrinking state aid available, CSUN officials will ask local corporations to help cover costs. The move is a sharp departure from tradition.

In a sharp departure from traditional methods for funding public universities, officials at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge plan to ask Ventura County businesses to underwrite some academic courses beginning this fall.

Following a new trend in the Cal State system, Ventura campus officials will begin a campaign this summer inviting local corporations to pay $3,000 to sponsor a course or $15,000 to underwrite a professor’s salary for one semester.

Ventura campus Director Joyce Kennedy acknowledged that the plan to solicit money from private enterprise is a big shift for the public university campus.

Unlike private universities, which traditionally rely on donations, public institutions by definition are funded mainly by state money.

With California’s continuing state budget crisis, however, public university administrators are having to be more creative, Kennedy said.

“It’s a whole new world,” she said.

At the Ventura campus, the $800,000 budget for instruction and operations is already 17% lower than two years ago, and it may be cut another 10%, or $96,000, in the next academic year, Kennedy said.

If such funding cuts go through, the campus may eliminate certain specialized classes that typically draw the fewest students, such as the Masters in Public Health program, she said.

Despite the apparent need for more money, however, the prospect of corporations and other private organizations underwriting academic courses sparks concern among some faculty at the CSUN-Ventura campus.

“It has to do with independence,” psychology instructor German Velasco said. “Would the sponsor want to know what I am teaching? Would the sponsor demand anything from me?”

The faculty at Cal State Long Beach had similar apprehensions last summer when the school became the first in the Cal State system to invite corporations to underwrite classes, said Sally Sherlock, the university’s development director.

“There’s always the fear that true research and true learning can be compromised by the involvement of corporations,” she said.

Sherlock said Long Beach university officials protected the school by picking which courses were available to be underwritten, rather than letting the private sponsors dictate the university’s curricula.

The fund-raising campaign garnered about $55,000, not only from corporations but also from organizations such as the German and Italian consulates in Los Angeles, who underwrote classes in the school’s foreign language departments.

Professional associations such as the American Public Works Organization also pitched in for classes in their fields, Sherlock said.

At least two other universities besides the CSUN-Ventura campus are either proposing or planning to launch similar fund-raising drives.

Cal State Chico officials said they plan to seek corporate sponsorship for courses in the 1993-94 academic year, while Cal State Sacramento officials said they are considering the idea.

Pamela McClure, the interim director of development at the main CSUN campus, said the Northridge school has sought donations from the parents of business students for the business school, but it has stopped short of seeking corporate money.

McClure said she is concerned that when public universities begin fund-raising, they send the message that state schools can survive with less state money.

Fund-raising “lulls people into a false sense of security that private funding is going to make up the difference” of state budget cuts, she said. “It will not. We’re not able to raise enough money fast enough to plug the holes.”

“The focus of private fund-raising should be on maintaining quality of programs,” McClure said. “It should be a supplement” to state money. “The funding of actual classes should not be borne by private citizens.”

State cutbacks are hitting universities in the Cal State system harder than University of California campuses, according to Kennedy. While state money represents 85% of the Cal State budget, it makes up only 23% of the funding for the University of California.

But the state is allocating an ever-decreasing proportion of its funds to Cal State, with only 3.5% of the total state budget going to the university system in 1993-94, compared to 4.6% in the mid-1980s, Kennedy said.

To plug the holes, Cal State--like other state-run schools--is passing costs on to students.

Fees rose 40% to an average of $1,308 per year this year, and the state Legislature is proposing to hike fees another 37% next year, Kennedy said.

The situation is even worse at the Ventura campus than at other Cal State schools.

Although students at the 1,200-student satellite school pay the same fees as their peers at other schools, the funds allocated to the Ventura campus amount to about half of the average spent on students in the Cal State system as a whole, Kennedy said.

She said she understands concerns about corporations determining academic priorities.

But, Kennedy said, the school would only allow companies and other private organizations to fund courses that are already offered at the Ventura campus or at Northridge.

University officials hope that private funding will be only a stopgap to help keep the campus afloat until the state fiscal situation improves or until Cal State builds a full-fledged, four-year university in Ventura County, Kennedy said.

“The ultimate purpose is to ensure the continuation of the integrity of our academic curriculum,” she said.