Institutional Priorities at Sacramento State

A Statement on Institutional Priorities at Sacramento State

By Monicka Tutschka, Professor of Political Science and CFA Membership & Organizing Co-Chair

Athletics enriches campus life in meaningful ways. Many of us enjoy attending games and celebrating the dedication of students who compete. Athletic programs contribute to school spirit, institutional visibility, student experience, and community connection. Their success relies on talented and committed coaches and staff who lead with integrity. 

However, at a public university, athletics complements, but does not replace, the university’s core mission. Knowledge dissemination, research, creative activity, student learning, and student well-being remain the central purposes that guide university priorities.

Since the beginning of this presidential tenure, the Academic Affairs operating budget at Sacramento State has reportedly increased by only 1%. On February 19, 2026, the Provost, the university’s chief academic officer, told the Faculty Senate, the body representing professors, that the academic division is facing a structural deficit for AY2025–2026. To address it, the Provost plans to expand higher-cost continuing education courses and reduce faculty hiring. These moves could limit access for lower-income students.

Meanwhile, over the past two and a half years, Sacramento State’s athletics budget has reportedly increased by 120%. The institution’s leadership has invested not only substantial funds but also enormous time, energy, travel, donor cultivation, administrative and marketing resources into pursuing entry into the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the NCAA. All of these investments are only likely to grow after Sac State establishes its place in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) of the FBS. 

It has become increasingly clear that this investment carries significant financial risk It remains unclear how the $23 million required to move to the MAC will be funded and how ongoing costs will be covered. In 2024, sixty-six percent of MAC athletic revenue derived from government/institutional support and student fees. These revenues make public universities more expensive for the tax- payer, and for the student. It also remains unclear what, if any, additional revenue the move to the MAC is expected to generate for the Sacramento State campus within the highly stratified FBS landscape.In 2024, total MAC athletics expenses exceeded total revenues, making it unclear what, if any, revenue streams would “trickle down” to Sacramento State, which is likely to sit near the bottom of the conference hierarchy.

Equally unclear is how institutional leadership plans to support Sacramento State students who participate in athletics and may be inequitably affected by the transition to FBS and the expansion of NIL agreements. Increased investment in MAC football raises important questions about resource allocation across the broader athletics program. Other sports also require sustained institutional support. It remains uncertain whether athletes, coaches and staff in these programs will retain the resources and visibility necessary to thrive.  

NIL opportunities further complicate this landscape. Emerging disparities across sports and genders risk producing structural inequalities between FBS football players and other students who play sports. The university has not clearly articulated its position on these inequities, particularly given that international students are often restricted from participating in NIL opportunities.

Additional concerns arise from the growing demands placed on students navigating NIL agreements. As collegiate athletics becomes further commodified, students may face new forms of vulnerability and potential exploitation. Contractual obligations often require significant time commitments, including product promotion, public appearances, financial management, and ensuring legal compliance. The demands exist alongside full academic workloads. Increased travel demands, particularly to the Midwest, will further constrain time for academic engagement. This raises questions about how football players (most of whom will not pursue professional football careers) will be supported in completing their degrees and preparing for life beyond college football.

If the university relies on sports gambling to grow football viewership and generate media revenue, additional risks emerge. These include harassment or stalking directed at players by disgruntled gamblers, as well as the broader problem of student gambling addiction, which disproportionately affects men. 

Finally, the long-term health risks associated with football remain insufficiently addressed. Repeated concussive and subconcussive impacts are related to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, degenerative brain condition. In its quest for brand visibility and sports revenue, institutional leadership has not clearly explained how it plans to mitigate these risks or support affected students over time.

The university’s move to the FBS should concern everyone who cares about students and Sacramento State’s academic integrity. The question is not whether a fiscally sustainable, ethically oriented, and equity-focused athletics program deserves support. It does. Rather, the concern is whether our students’ well-being and our academic mission have been sidelined by the university’s corporate-minded FBS gamble.

This is a moment when the academic division should be receiving much greater investment. Enrollment is robust at Sacramento State. The Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Management told the Faculty Senate in February that enrollment is above the Chancellor’s target. Student needs are expanding. Faculty, counsellor, librarian and staff workloads have grown in ways that are often invisible to those outside the university.

Faculty are on the front lines of the student experience. Students come first to professors when they seek academic engagement and support. They come when they cannot find the courses they need to graduate. They come when degree requirements shift, and the system feels byzantine. They come seeking advising beyond their major: general education and graduation requirements, changing policies, transfer credit evaluations, student rights and responsibilities. They come asking about financial aid, material support, existing job opportunities, mental health services, incidents of bias and animus, participation in student clubs, internship placements, library services, research opportunities, graduate school, and career prospects.

It is equally important to recognize that those serving on the academic side of the university are navigating the rapidly evolving impact of AI on teaching, assessment, and service provision. They are providing services in multiple modalities (in-person, synchronous online, asynchronous online). They are working to defend affordable public education amid pressures of neoliberal corporatization.  They are seeking to sustain an expansive conception of higher education at a time when some seek to narrow the mission of the people’s university to workforce development. They are reminding Sacramento that education is vital not only for individual development, but also for the health of the broader community, for a life lived both beyond work and within the workday itself. They are supporting students who work full-time, who cannot afford additional fees, who are unhoused, who commute long distances, who face discrimination and visa uncertainty, who fear immigration enforcement on campus, who witness bombs dropping on their countries of origin, who experience stress, and who need accommodation. Each of these realities requires time, attention, emotional labor, and massive institutional support.

And yet, the administration seems distracted with FBS while class sizes are rising, making it harder for faculty to provide individualized attention to all students. Course offerings are also shrinking, extending time to graduation. Many budgets in the academic division are a pittance of what is needed to meaningfully support students through the learning process (don’t let the shiny web pages and boastful branding obfuscate the reality of underfunding academics).

In this context, those who serve the academic mission are frequently expected to perform important, student-centered functions without corresponding investment in support, staffing, or development resources. Lecturers assigned a full teaching load (5 classes) are making considerably less than 10% of the Chancellor’s excessive salary of over $790,000. Most lecturers are not offered full-time work, have far more precarious job appointments, and often teach at multiple campuses across the Sacramento region just to earn a living.  Library budgets for research databases and journals have been cut, and library operating hours have been reduced. CFA—the union representing faculty, counsellors, coaches, and librarians—has launched a petition to restore library resources and access. Classroom technology and infrastructure investments are falling behind.  Routine maintenance is underfunded. Significant investment in accessible infrastructure is not forthcoming, disadvantaging students with disabilities.  Resources to attend professional conferences where faculty, counselors, librarians and staff stay current, disseminate research, and build collaborations has been depleted. Institutional support for research and creative activity has significantly dried up at this R2 university. External grants are increasingly hard to secure given the existing political climate. The campus’s Center for Teaching and Learning has seen reduced resources. 

Moreover, staff who support the academic division are experiencing hiring freezes. Understaffing means mission critical initiatives happen with less frequency.  Fewer talks are scheduled, fewer installations are put up, fewer creative events surface on campus, fewer department level initiatives spark, fewer internships launch. The circulation of knowledge and creativity diminishes within the university and across the Sacramento region. Extra-curricular educational opportunities for students become more limited.

Committee service is also impacted by the chronic underfunding of academics. Important, evidence-based initiatives that serve to uplift the educational mission are proposed in department, college, university, and community-oriented committees. But without operational funds, meaningful progress evaporates or stalls. Committee service and shared governance begin to feel like hollow exercises. They become mere discussions when unaccompanied by the resources necessary for meaningful action.

The perception that academics is not the priority also affects morale, recruitment, retention, and reputation. Important members of the academic community are looking for jobs elsewhere. The devaluation of academics affects students’ educational experiences too; and it affects the university’s standing as a public institution whose primary responsibility is student development and social mobility, knowledge production and dissemination, and creative activity.

The result is not a dramatic collapse. It is a gradual erosion of the core educational mission of the university.

Sacramento State serves a region with enormous need and extraordinary potential. Many of our students are first-generation college students of color. Many balance work, family, and school. Many rely on mentorship by people within the academic division as their primary navigational guide through higher education. These people are not peripheral to student success. They are the infrastructure of it.

This is not a call to abandon a sustainable, financially responsible, ethical athletics program. This is not a call to criticize our coaches, or to attack students who participate in athletes. It is a call to restore proportionality and mission alignment. University leadership must refocus time and strategic energy on the academic core. It must reevaluate budgetary priorities to meaningfully strengthen the academic division.  It must invest in faculty, counselor, librarian and staff hiring and professional support. It must restore research, creative activity, and professional development funding. It must rebuild staff capacity and student service provision. It must publicly reaffirm that the academic function of the university is its central purpose. It must acknowledge that Sacramento State is not a private enterprise that places the institution’s financial health at the mercy of private donors and imposes steep financial burdens on primarily working-class students through increases in tuition and student fees. It must proudly state that Sacramento State is a public university.Now is the time for the campus community and the Sacramento region to defend publicly funded education and to ask campus leadership to realign its vision, its energy, its resources, its donors, its marketing, its messaging, and its staff with the core mission of the people’s university: educating and supporting students, advancing knowledge and creative activity, and serving the public good with robust public support.

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