The California Problem...

In case no one has been watching the news, the recession was deeper and more prolonged than we have experienced in the recent past. Because of all of the lagging indicators and the nature of my job, this year the recession had only a slight impact on our budget. In sum, we had a hiring freeze that happened after we hired someone in our division. (this is a really good thing for me, but I will explain that later.)

The recession's impact for the 2009-2010 academic year will be pretty severe. All of the staff in the CSU system have taken a furlough that amounts to a 10% pay cut. The faculty have done the same. We are required to have all of these furlough days approved by our department chair and Dean. We are required to sign a certificate that says we know what a furlough is and that we WILL NOT work on those days. Since most academics don't work every day of the week, this shouldn't be a problem, but it has caused many discussions in the hallways.

A couple of weeks ago, we fired all of the part time lecturers (adjunct professors) and some full time lecturers. That means that our faculty (in the division) went from around 70 to around 30. I had considered them my buffer, because according to the collective bargaining agreement, they had to go before I do. Oh, yeah, I forgot, all of the faculty are subject to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) which dictates the rules for hiring, retention, work load, promotion, and obviously... firing. So, I know who will get fired next if the budget gets worse. It is projected to get worse. So, first will go a full time lecturer, then the three part-time retired faculty, then the tenure track guy they hired last year, then me and my colleague who were hired together. I am a little edgy because I don't know how deep the cuts will go next year, but if the faculty start to fall, I know the order. This is only of partial assistance to me because the job market for professors has a one year hiring lag. I have to be on the job market right now in order to get a job one year from now. If I get a job offer, I would have to accept or decline the offer without knowing whether my job is secure where I am. There is no way around this information problem because of the budget problem that California always seems to face.

Back to this year's budget. We took the pay cut to manage part of the loss, but our campus has overshot our enrollment numbers for a couple of years. It was a growth strategy that the Chancellor had tolerated because we have problems with our funding formula. (Besides significantly subsidizing education for Californians, the campus subsidizes healthcare for students; thus over enrollment is not a matter of exceeding fixed costs, but significant costs for each additional student.) It is a long story that can be summed up by saying that the Chancellor won't tolerate it during bad budget years. We are expected to return to the approved enrollment numbers, nearly 5000 students less than we have now. The most recent strategy is to stop enrollment and cut classes. This wouldn't be a problem, except that some of the students hadn't enrolled yet, some of the classes cut were fully enrolled, some of the classes had already started, and the combined effect of these actions together kicks some students out of class without the ability to re-enroll in open sections. A number of people who thought that they were going to graduate this fall, won't be able to get into the classes that they need. They won't get into any classes because they chose the wrong section, which randomly got cut.

The interim solution to the problem is to offer courses during the summer and intersession (January). These are not funded by the state, so they don't count against our enrollment targets. Instead, they are directly funded by enrollment numbers and higher class costs to the students. Sound great, right? I am sure that there is more to come, but this post is long enough.