Los Angeles Times Interveiw : Barry Munitz : Striving to Maintain CSU’s Golden Promise--With Less Money

Next to the door that opens into Barry Munitz’s Long Beach office is a sign that reads, “Rattlesnakes may be found in this area. Give them distance and respect.” It’s a souvenir Munitz picked up a few years ago in Arizona, but seems quite appropriate here. As chancellor of the 20-campus California State University, Munitz is faced with a shrinking budget and an expanding student population. Since taking the position in 1991, he’s garnered the wrath of students and parents by raising fees and canceling classes. He has outraged staff by freezing wages and embittered his faculty by laying off teachers. A snake pit is cozy by comparison.

Last week, Munitz proposed a budget that raises student fees 24%. It also challenges a basic premise of the 33-year-old California Higher Education Master Plan. Since 1960, that plan has entitled any high-school senior who graduates in the top-third of their class a chance to attend a Cal State school. Munitz now suggests the state may no longer have the money to do this.

Even before California fell into recession, a decade of tax-revolt legislation had created a funding crisis for the state’s higher-education system. So Munitz’s mission is a classic ‘90s challenge--do more, with less money and fewer people. His is a gargantuan task--reforming a $2-billion enterprise that serves 350,000 students and employs 34,000 faculty and staff.

Munitz, 52, was born in Flatbush, N.Y., and worked nights to get through Brooklyn College. He then earned a doctorate in literature at Princeton. In the 1960s, he was an assistant to Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, and, at 35, was named head of the University of Houston. He spent the 1980s in finance, working with corporate takeover artist Charles E. Hurwitz.

Along with the snake warning, Munitz’s office is decorated with antique chessboards--the game is his passion. When describing problems facing CSU and offering solutions, Munitz speaks as he would of chess, looking at the big picture and to the game’s future--while knowing it must be won a piece at a time.

Question: Are we no longer going to be able to accept the top third of high-school seniors into the Cal State system?

Answer: I think we are at risk of being able to meet that part of the Master Plan commitment. That plan had three major components--access, quality and cost. Everyone who worked hard in school, who wanted to go to college, could stay in California and get a more than reasonable quality degree at a very low cost. Where we are now is one or more of the three legs of that stool are going to have to go.

Facing such a situation, where does one bend? Well, you don’t want to bend on quality, because then the access doesn’t make any sense--access to what? You have to provide a decent education. So that leaves two places to bend: How many people come, and how much do they pay?

Our position has been that the state will never again be able to subsidize higher public education for everyone in California, regardless of their ability to pay.

It’s time to be realistic about sharing the burden of cost between families andthe state. But until that policy can beadapted, our only recourse is to limit the number of students to whom we can give a decent education.

Q: How does the subsidy for a Cal State student compare with that of Florida?

A: In the last three to four years, we have gone from the student share being about 11% to about 20%. Nationally, the average is 28% to 32%. That’s why our board has proposed that one-third of the instructional cost be borne by the family.

And we are still almost bizarre in how inexpensive it is to attend CSU. It’s a quarter to a third of what it would cost a student to walk across the border to another state-funded school, and one-tenth the cost of a private university.

Q: Where are the roots of Cal State’s problems? Do they go all the way back to the tax revolt of the 1970s?

A: If you had to backtrack, the first step would probably be Prop. 13; then, entitlement legislation that says at least 40% of the state education budget has to go to kindergarten-through-12th-grade education. Together, they simultaneously restrict revenue and commit expenditure. Add to that the dramatic increase in population, the dramatic change in profile of the population and the dramatic cut in defense spending, and you get to where we are now. Suddenly, having given the people an expectation of a college education on the assumption that life will be lovely forever, the money stops flowing.

For higher education, it’s also been a problem, because we tend to be slow to change. We have not done the job required in terms of doing business differently. Political California and corporate California had to restructure because of this downturn. We in higher education are only now beginning to face these restructuring questions.

Q: So does the state need to rethink the whole mission of the higher education system? Is it time for a new Master Plan?

A: I’m not sure we have to rethink the mission aspects, but we immediately have to rethink the resource side. That does not mean if we just told our story better, or if the state’s economy gets better, we’ll be fine. We have to fundamentally change the way we do business. The notion of the three-tiered system --UC, Cal State, community college--still makes great sense and is the envy of the world. But we have to look seriously at the resource perspective and the assumptions about how we are delivering the product.

Q: One popular idea is to deliver the product quicker--some educators are talking about three-year degree plans. Could this be part of your solution?

A: For traditional, full-time students, it could be sensible. The problem for CSU is that we have non-traditional students. Their average age is almost 27. Two-thirds of them are working 30 hours a week or more. So my concern is not a three-year degree, or any magic number. My interest is: Can you get out in the number of years you want to get out in? That could be three, four or nine. Can you control your own destiny? And in the face of cuts, layoffs and our lack of flexibility, I’m not comfortable answering yes to that question right now.

Q: Are you worried some young Californians may forgo a college education because of the funding problems at Cal State?

A: The ticking bomb under the social fabric of the state is that just as the demographic profile is changing, we are saying to those coming to the school door that the rules are changing. We just can’t do that. And not just because it will make those people angry. From a crass, economic view, that’s the next generation of the work force. They have to be educated and trained. It’s a particular dilemma for us, because we are training three out of four of the K-through-12 teachers in the state, and one out of nine in the entire nation! So all of those people who are worried about what’s happening in the public schools have got to confront our ability to educate the educators.

We’re in danger of undermining the social assumption that if you’ve worked hard in California and paid your taxes, a quality education will be available for your children at a reasonable cost. If you start to get the signal that contract has disappeared, you question other aspects of your relationship to the state--that intangible rip in the social fabric worries me.

Q: Can you explain two of your reform proposals--one for designating certain campuses as “charter schools,” and the other a service program that will help students pay for their education?

A: The idea is to let a couple of our campuses loose of our bureaucracy. The idea grew out of plans for the demilitarization of Ft. Ord. We’ve agreed to build a new academic institution there--but in a non-traditional way.

We thought there might be a connection here to what the White House is proposing in its national-service plan. There is a lot of work to be done to convert Ft. Ord into CSU-Monterey. Why not hire prospective students who could participate in building their own campus? But the national-service plan, as it’s being proposed, doesn’t help students at CSU very much. You can’t loan $10,000 to a single parent, and then have them spend two years painting the Golden Gate Bridge to pay it back--they’re already working, and will continue working.

The model that I like better--and the one that drove the last dramatic transformation of higher education in this country--is the GI Bill. There, you did the work first, you got the credit and then you used the credit to go to school. So what we want to try, during the building of the Monterey campus, is to pay some people less of a wage and more of a chit. The chit will not only help them afford to go to school, it will give them some priority in application, in registration--all negotiable commodities for those who want to go to school at this new campus.

Q: You bring a good deal of business and financial experience to the job. What are some of your proposals for stretching the dollars in your shrinking budget?

A: It goes back to the beginning of our conversation, about doing business differently. That will require complicated but exciting discussions with the faculty, the unions, the students about everything-- from what should the size of a class be to what’s a reasonable workload for faculty. It will require a dramatic look at technology--from at-distance learning to phone-in registration. How we link with corporate California. The dollar-stretching will require a willingness to put everything on the table. Nothing assumed sacred, nothing assumed correct.

Q: Can you look down the road, perhaps 20 years, and paint me both the happy picture and the sad one?

A: The sad picture is the loss of opportunity, the weakening of socio- economic mobility and the undermining of the next generation of the work force. Fewer people go to college; they are less well-cared for; they are less excited about what they do, and they serve the state less well. That’s a picture we have to be sure is not the one we paint.

Here’s the happy picture: Through a candid attack on all our basic principles, we know which to keep and which to change. Then we take a genuine look at constitutional revision--how does the money come in and how does it get spent? If we do those things, California can continue to be the envy of the world as possessing the single finest example of a higher education system. I am absolutely convinced we’ll deliver this picture.