College Budget Woes

“Budget Gap Adds to State College Strain” (Jan. 26) forecasts hard times with the coming budget cuts, but I was struck by the graph of spending during the last 10 years. You showed that spending on higher education more than doubled, from $5 billion to $10 billion a year. One would have expected significant improvement in that period, but I am a Cal State professor, and over the last 10 years my teaching load and class sizes have generally risen, while research support has fallen. Salaries in my department have also drifted well below national norms. The article left me wondering what happened to all that funding.

Larry Press

Los Angeles