The California Faculty Association initiates the "Future of the CSU: Reclaiming A University for All the People of California" to provide statewide forums for these voices. The project will host hearings on CSU campuses, beginning in March 2000, to identify solutions to current challenges that can reclaim and renew the CSU for all Californians. These hearings will enable members of the public to express their views about a public resource critical to their own opportunities and the continued health and prosperity of the state. The hearings will permit faculty to identify conditions that can best provide a quality higher education for CSU students. And the hearings will enable participants to express a collaborative vision of the CSU, which renews its traditional promise and clarifies the alternative to the high-volume, lowered-quality model favored by many administrators. The university is not a diploma mill.

THE PROBLEM:
"California is at risk. Whether we choose to admit it or not, California has been making a de facto decision over the past several years to slowly dismantle its world-renowned higher education system."
--“A Dream Deferred: California’s Waning Higher Education" California Postsecondary Education Commission Opportunities, (CPEC), 1993.

"Tight budgets [have] triggered sharp reductions in course offerings and generated other dislocation for California's college students."
--Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee, Dec. 8, 1999.¹

For 40 years the California State University system has played a unique role in the life of this state. With 23 campuses in its different regions, 20,000 faculty members and 350,000 students, it is an invaluable public resource and the largest higher education system in the nation. Charged with providing higher education to the top third of the state's high-school graduates, attuning to California’s changing demographics because of its location in the communities of the state, and dedication to helping our citizens develop their best potentials, the CSU has opened opportunities for thousands of the state’s citizens and made critical contributions to its economy and public life. As a public university it also plays a crucial 'civic education role,' seeking to provide a “broad-based education of students to be effective citizens in a democratic society...and to serve the community."² It is not surprising that many call it "The People's University."

Now that special role is threatened. The challenges that face it are similar to those facing universities nationally but are aggravated in California by the rapid demographic change and by what many experts diagnose as a failed process of higher education decision-making. A "policy vacuum" has produced a "default [on] a coherent set of policies," the response to which, according to the RAND Corporation, threatens to break "the farsighted contract" made by the famous Master Plan.³ Other analysts describe the degradation of quality caused by these crises, of "sharp reductions in course offerings and...dislocations for California's college students," and "an erosion of the financial capacity to serve broad public purposes."⁴ CFA believes that there is no more appropriate constituency to consult about restoring that contract and the future of The People's University than the people themselves.


THE CRISES:
At least five crises threaten the CSU. Any discussion of the future of the university has to begin with them.

The enrollment crisis: An unprecedented wave of new students will seek to enroll in California higher education institutions in the next decade. 130,000 of them are expected in the CSU, a 35 percent increase over present numbers. This amounts to 12,000 to15,000 new students a year for the next 10 years and poses major challenges to already crowded facilities.

The fiscal crisis: The Master Plan sought to ensure access to all Californians who desired a college education but did not provide for funding increases of this magnitude. Higher education funding has in fact fallen drastically over the last 30 — from 16.8 percent of the state general fund in 1968, to 16 percent of the GF in 1985 and 12.4 percent in 1993 — or from 5.16 percent of the state budget in 1970, to 4.36 percent in 1980, and 2.7 percent in 1997.⁵ This decline was partly caused by shifting leadership priorities and partly by a recently evolved "state budget structure with a permanent imbalance between general fund revenues and...demands for new programs." The CSU Chancellor's Office notes that funding for the CSU has "become a leftover."⁶

The demographic crisis: High levels of immigration and expanding minority enrollments make the new student body the most diverse in history. Meeting the needs of such an ethnically and racially diverse student body calls for a multicultural orientation and creative responses in pedagogy and curriculum. Instead, hires of new black and Mexican-American faculty are actually declining. Changing demographics also raise new questions about how the CSU should serve the actual communities of the state.

The access crisis: A combination of expanding enrollments and declining funds threatens access to higher education. Meeting this problem the easy ways — by increasing tuition, raising entrance criteria or excluding students who need remediation — would exclude deserving students, especially of minority descent. It would also curtail opportunity and profoundly alter the mission of the institution. Worse, the restrictions would occur at a time when economic inequality is increasing, the middle class is shrinking and, RAND authors warn, "the divide between the rich and the poor in California...[is increasingly] drawn sharply along ethnic lines." Were access to be restricted, it would therefore not only diminish California's economic productivity and international competitiveness, they add, but also "threaten the social and political stability of the state."⁷

The policy-making crisis: Responding to these problems adequately and insuring access to quality education has been hampered by the flawed policy-making process noted above. The CSU Chancellor's Office recognizes these flaws but has improvised with quick-fixes that reduce real wages (impairing the CSU's ability to compete for top-flight new professors), increase hires of temporaries and part-timers until they make up half the system's teaching staff and often increase class size as well. CSU managers also sponsor a spate of accountability, assessment and merit-pay proposals that threaten to standardize instruction and, by focusing on outputs, to divert attention from the real crux of the problem — system inputs. In sum, 'California remains chronically unable to develop a consistent, well-planned funding policy for its colleges and universities.' Due to the lack of coherent policy-making, "The state [has] abandoned many of its commitments under...the Master Plan."⁸

WHAT IS THE CFA?
The California Faculty Association is the professional union of CSU faculty, including librarians, counselors and coaches. It is a leading lobbying force for public higher education in the state legislature and an advocate for higher education priorities with the public. Faculty look to the CFA not simply to get more adequate compensation but to secure the best conditions for CSU students' education.


THE PROJECT:
Do the remedies currently being attempted meet the needs of Californians? Are they taking us where we need to go? Do they preserve the quality education students expect and faculty are committed to provide? What is the role of the comprehensive public university in changing times, and how can we restore dependable, dedicated funding for it?
The Future of the CSU hearings provide a forum for members of the public to join groups within the CSU (faculty union, academic senates, students, and campus staff) in addressing these questions and others. The hearings will culminate in a statewide conference featuring hearings participants, national analysts and representatives from other universities. Project findings will be published, studied by CFA leaders and submitted to CSU officials, state legislators and the governor.

CFA's Future of the University Project presents a rare opportunity for members of CSU communities and the larger public to engage in a democratic conversation about the purposes and performance of the largest component of California's higher education system. CSU faculty are employed, ultimately, by the public, and we look forward to initiating a broad dialogue with the communities, families and citizen groups of the state about these critical issues. Please attend the hearing in your region and join us in these efforts.

¹. P. Schrag, “The Pillar-to-Post Nonsystem of Funding California’s Colleges,” Sacramento Bee, Dec. 8, 1999.

². J. Wellman, “Contributing to the Civic Good: Assessing and Accounting for the Civic Contributions of Higher Education,” Institute for Higher Education Policy, Washington, D.C., 1999. p. 8.

³. “Breaking the Social Contract: The Fiscal Crisis in California Higher Education, “ September, 1997; and “By Design or Default?” P. Callen and J. Finney, California Higher Education Policy Center, 1993.

⁴. Schrag, "Pillar to Post;" Wellman, p. 7.

⁵. Or from 1.2 percent of personal income in 1975 to .7 percent of personal income in 1996, Callen and Finney, p. 4. [locating source of additional data.]

⁶. “Cornerstones,” CSU Chancellor’s Office, Jan. 1998, p. 28. "In effect, California has been underfunding higher education since the mid-1970s." RAND, p. 11.

⁷. RAND, pp. 3, 5.

⁸. Schrag, “Pillar-to-Post;” Wm. Pickens, "The Challenge," California Citizens Commission on Higher Education," 1997