The Sorry State of CSU Students’ Preparedness

Re “Most Freshmen at Cal State Still Lack Basic Academic Skills,” Jan. 29: The sample ballot for next month’s election has arrived and, once again, we are being asked to approve more than $13 billion in additional spending for education, including a substantial amount for the Cal State University system. Yet The Times reports that 58% of the freshmen who matriculated at Cal State last fall were unable to pass basic math and English placement exams.

Why should taxpayers pay salaries of college professors who are reduced to teaching basic math and English? They are hired to teach college subjects to students capable of learning them.

Anyone who has spend 12 years in school without picking up even elementary math and English should not be admitted to a state-financed university.

Peg Manning

Los Angeles

*

Maybe those CSU “leaders” have yet to get the message. The state is broke. If the chancellors cannot step up to the plate, then it’s time for them to leave. Any idea to support outreach and potentially screw up a senior’s chance to graduate because the class they need is no longer offered is about as stupid an idea as I can think of.

The chancellors should make a change to the entrance criteria. Try this: If you cannot come through with an SAT score of 1000, you do not belong. Go to a junior college and learn something. And, no junior college transfers without a solid B average.

Protecting the teachers who want a graduate degree (so they can get a raise) by fixing the cost of the graduate program is lunacy also. Teachers are no more or less important than any other person with the skills, aptitude and grades who wants an advanced degree.

The CSU system and higher education in any California school that is public is cheap by every standard. Too cheap. The Times would do all of us some good if a comparison was made so everybody could see what a great deal we have.

Tom Simmerman

Fullerton