VAN NUYS : CSUN’s Wilson Calls Funding Cuts Ironic

Saying that “California’s budget problems are also Cal State Northridge’s budget problems,” CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson said Wednesday that cutbacks in funding for colleges and universities come when their services are needed most.

“The painful irony of our current situation is that the support base for public education is eroding at precisely the time when a strong education system is necessary to our economic recovery in California and across the country,” said Wilson, speaking at a luncheon of the Van Nuys Rotary Club.

“With the kind of global competition that is now simply a fact of doing business, we must continue to produce graduates who can meet the demands of the global marketplace,” Wilson said.

The decision of the California State University trustees to increase student fees to one-third of the total educational costs, Wilson said, would mean that for the 1993-94 school year students at CSUN would pay $1,788.

“In the current economic crisis that we face in California, this is the only way to preserve the quality of higher education,” Wilson said.

Highlighting the school’s role in the San Fernando Valley, Wilson said she was particularly proud of several programs.

The school’s voluntary income tax preparation program, which trains students to provide income tax preparation help to non-English speaking taxpayers, the elderly and disabled, is the largest in the United States and processes 10,000 returns annually, Wilson said.

Employers conducted more than 4,000 interviews last year at the university’s career center and 4% of the state’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers have attended Cal State Northridge, Wilson said.

Said Wilson: “Cal State Northridge may be, if not the Valley’s best-kept secret, certainly its least-trumpeted asset.”