CSUN Proposes to Keep Permanent Faculty but Trim Up to 800 Classes

NORTHRIDGE —  California’s lingering recession will spare permanent faculty members in the coming school year, but will drive up prices for students and could prompt the cancellation of as many as 800 classes, according to Cal State Northridge budget proposals presented Tuesday.

As many as 300 part-time instructors will be out of jobs for the 1993-94 school year, but tenured and tenure-track faculty will not be laid off under the plan, school officials said.

Last fall, the school employed about 780 tenured and tenure-track professors and 470 instructors.

“The bottom line is that many of us will be having to do more with less resources,” CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson told a meeting of faculty, students and staff.

Wilson is holding a series of campus meetings this week to hear reaction to several cost-saving measures intended to help the campus balance its 1993-94 budget.

Although Wilson has the final say on the budget, she created campus committees that, for the past several months, have worked on ways to reduce expenses.

Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed a 7% reduction in the money budgeted for the California State University system, but school officials are worried that the Legislature may cut even deeper by the time it approves the 1993-94 state budget this summer.

The campus plan prepares for a cut in state funding of as much as 13%.

In addition to the personnel cuts, the plan suggests charging CSUN students an extra $30 per semester for medical services at the campus--an increase on top of the 36% statewide fee increase expected in the fall. The fee for medical coverage is similar to what is being charged at most of the 20 CSU campuses, school officials said.

Students have so far borne most of the impact of the state’s recession on the CSU system.

Fees this year have already gone up 40%, with the annual cost of attending CSUN totaling about $1,300. Statewide fees have doubled since 1990 and are expected to double again by 1995 to more than $2,500 a year.

“The students who are really going to be affected are those in high school now,” said CSUN student Andrew Faulkner, a senior majoring in journalism.

The layoff of part-time instructors at CSUN will cause the cancellation of between 400 and 840 classes, depending on the Legislature’s higher education cuts. Elimination of those classes is likely to increase the time it takes for students to complete a degree, a longtime complaint about the school.

In the worst case--state cuts of 10% or more--the plan calls for eliminating 169 full-time teaching positions at each of CSUN’s eight schools. The cuts range from 27 fewer full-time positions in the School of Social and Behavioral Science to 15 fewer in the graduate School of Education.

Administrative and campus maintenance departments have also made plans for budget cuts as deep as 10%.