State Budget Priorities Drain Life From Colleges : While CSUN undergoes the death of a thousand cuts, legislators are increasing spending on prisons by 9%. In a grim way, the two go hand-in-hand.

Learning that her great-grandfather had once sentenced a beggar to die “the death of a thousand cuts,” Lena St. Clair, a character in Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club,” asks her mother just what the punishment was like.

Forgive me as I sit through yet another season of budget-cutting in Sacramento, waiting for the next slice to be taken out of the hide of the California State University system, for thinking of Lena’s great-grandfather, and of that dreadful sentence. Unfortunately, that is how it is beginning to feel to those of us who work and study at Cal State Northridge.

What is it like to teach on a campus that is undergoing the death of a thousand cuts? Sometimes it feels like being the one who has to decide who will be allowed on board an already overflowing lifeboat, and who will be left to swim.

I have enrolled--beyond the class-size limits urged by my department chair, dean and even chancellor--the student who will lose her scholarship if she doesn’t get into my class, the student who will lose his health benefits (while needing surgery) and the student who will lose her teaching job.

But there are limits to what the faculty can do. Eventually, if a course is too crowded, everyone suffers. The students don’t get the attention they need, and, more insidiously, the budget-cutters in Sacramento begin to get the idea that CSU can get by with even less money, and so order fewer lifeboats.

So where are all the seats going? You’ve probably seen the figures, the hundreds of classes cut in the past two years, but I’ll make that more concrete by looking at just one department.

Did you know that the CSUN English Department once employed 60 part-time lecturers? In light of this year’s cuts, there will be about 15 next year. After that, with another season of cutting before us, perhaps none.

Did you know that of some 12 retirements among the full-time English faculty in the last two years, only two have been replaced? A department that once had more than 100 faculty to teach a student body of 29,000 will soon have about 40. With part-time faculty teaching up to three courses a semester, and full-time faculty teaching four, that’s a lot of classes to lose.

Meanwhile, everyone still on the lifeboat knows what to do. Students call for faculty pay cuts. Faculty suspiciously eye administrative and athletic expenditures. And the administration speaks of “downsizing,” “differential cuts” and further “layoffs.”

In such a climate, it is all too easy to identify with one’s own cohort (student, staff, faculty or administration) and attack the wrongheadedness of another. But that doesn’t get us anywhere. I’ll tell you what cohort we should be defending: the CSU system and the people of California, who all benefit from it. That’s easily said, of course, but we have to start with that, because I think it will help us sort out some priorities.

I can’t help but be struck by some figures that show where our priorities now lie. From what I can make of the new budget, prison spending will increase by 9%, while spending on higher education will decrease by half a percent.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but take the projected $3.25-billion state prison budget and add it to the $1.2 billion spent by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department alone, and then compare the total to the $1.43 billion that the state spent on the entire CSU system (that’s 20 campuses) last year. Now ask yourself who’s bearing the burden of budget cuts these days.

It may appear that CSU got off easy this time around, but this year’s nick must be seen against another figure. Eight years ago, its portion of the state budget was 4.57%. Now it is 3.5%. Defenders of prison spending may point to the billions spent on K-12 schools, but it is important to realize that the educational continuum these days is really K-baccalaureate. A high school diploma just isn’t enough, and with the cost of a UC education skyrocketing (not to mention the private university space shot), CSU is the only realistic choice for most Californians.

Is Sacramento getting the message? Maybe, but from what I read, the Legislature hears mostly about crime from its constituents, and crime, apparently, pays. They’ll have to start hearing a lot more about the CSU system before next season’s slashing begins, and the seasons beyond that, because by the year 2000, 140,000 students who will be counting upon CSU to fulfill their dreams are expected to be turned away from its doors.

Well, not to worry: There ought to be plenty of prison space for them.