(Calif. State University) chancellor proposes (32%) new tuition hike

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Forced to plan for a possible $1 billion reduction in state funds, California State University Chancellor Charles Reed said today that CSU may raise tuition by another 32 percent and close enrollment to about 20,000 students next spring.

If approved by the trustees in July, tuition would soar to $6,450 next spring, up from $4,880. Add mandatory campus fees averaging $950, and the cost of attending CSU would top $7,400 a year.

That would be more than twice the price of just three years ago.

"There are no good options, only extreme choices," Reed told CSU trustees who are meeting in Long Beach this week.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/10/BA9R1JEC3K.DTL&tsp=1

:sarcasm:

in Cali... talk about being privileged.

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A few blog headlines?

Here's a comprehensive paper which debunks the myth that wealthy people flee when their taxes are increased.

www.stanford.edu/~cy10/public/Millionaire_Migration.pdf (pdf)

The authors concluded that moderate tax increases on the rich do not lead to any notable increase in emigration, and thus do bring a net gain in total tax receipts.

The state is in so much trouble because of bad tax policy, it isn't even funny.


http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon1023lm.html


http://www.clucerf.org/analysis/article.php?id=6129

what a load of garbage. There will always be rich living in Cali....

Let's see...there's this, there's income tax to pay down the deficit, there's Medicare/Medicaid, and so on.

As much as you clearly hate rich people, exactly how much are they supposed to pay, and at what point do you kill the
golden goose?

but we all know that's impossible with GOP intransigence.

the goose of the filthy rich has many eggs left.

Corporations are even more undertaxed here than wealthy individuals.

There are also a host of other ways to raise revenue: an oil severance tax (we're the only oil-producing jurisdiction in the world without one), the alcohol tax (hasn't been raised since the '60s), etc. But the repukes hold enough votes to keep any tax from getting the required two-thirds supermajority.

Now I know they lost some of that when the markets crashed, but they've likely recovered most of it (if their fund managers are worth a crap), what I dont understand is why they are hording massive funds instead of funneling some of that money into helping offset tuitions now when its needed?

Universities werent supposed to be as profit driven as a corporation.

A friend of mine works for the UC system and she told me that they charge the employees for making a phone call from their desks. I guess this is how they are trying to get money back into system (good luck on that one).

I know their pension funds lost a bundle and that what was once there is now about 1/2 there. :(

However, to hell with pension funds, etc. The state college system was to be one for students that couldn't afford the likes of a Univ. of Calif. education, it was for everyone else.

This is just plain wrong! :(

I hope they can find a way to change this (are you listening Gov. Brown?).

:dem: :kick:

Get rid of the layers of bureaucracy. There are a whole lot of vice presidents, associate vice presidents, and managerial
types the system could live without.

Presidents of several campuses need to be weeded out. Some have been presidents for more than a decade, have lousy track records in terms of leadership, but who still collect six figure salaries.

Reed needs to be fired: It has been during his watch that the whole system has become bloated with the above said administrators at the expense of the real educational mandate of the universities. Under Reed, universities in the system have come to resemble what's been happening on Wall Street.

The whole proposal about raising fees while cutting enrollments doesn't make sense. One would think you'd raise tuition so you could deal support enrollment.

The Board of Trustees are a bunch of Republican political paybacks who know zilch about education. Stop giving them the power to have any say about how universities should be run.

I did a quick rough calculation and figured at the current rate students are paying about $250/hr for the hours of instruction. That depends on class size and exact number of hours they get of course. Someone else might have a better estimate. So since the actual instructors probably make like $20/hr I'l like to know where the rest goes.....

Take tuition as $6400/year (leave out fees, which pays for gym facilities, etc). A full load is 15 credits/semester, which means 15 contact hours/week (leave out labs) times 14 weeks of class gives 210 hours, times 2 semesters yields 410 contact hours per year. So a student is paying $15.61/contact hour of instruction. Take a class of 40 (yes, freshman classes are larger, but upper division classes are 20-30 students). That would yield an average of $625/class hour (undergraduate) to the university coming from tuition.

A professor at CSU-LA is making $81,000/9 months (see http://losangeles.stateuniversity.com/ for data). Benefits are near 25%, so take total compensation to be $100K. Each faculty at CSU has a typical load of 3 courses per semester unless they have a research program and bring in money that offsets salary, in which case they teach 2 courses per semester. 3 courses (9 credit hours) means 126 contact hours/semester. This yields a cost of instructional staff of $100k/(2*126) or $396/class hour. A bit more than half of the amount paid by students taking that class hour (14 contact hours over the semester). You get about the same ratio if you take 21K students times 6.4k tuition and compare to the 100k of compensation for the 579 FT faculty (not counting part-timers, who are paid less).

So where does the other $229/class hour go in a university? For every faculty member there are 2 staff. Right there goes the rest of the money. That is without accounting for physical plant, heating, cooling, water, IT, ...

Bottom line - the real cost for delivering a contact hour of instruction to a student is actually more than the $15.61 they pay for that contact hour. The state has been making up the difference, subsidizing education, but the subsidy is shrinking, so the tuition must go up. But it is still less than what it really costs to provide the amount of instruction that the tuition buys.

And are faculty really working real loads? The actual workload, with office hours (at least 1 hr/week/class), lecture preparation, creating exams and homework, grading exams and homework, and student advising means that the 9 hours per week in the class room is actually more like 27 hours of real work related to instruction. Add to that the other work that teaching faculty must do (committees, some measure of scholarship or implementation of teaching innovations) and you get to 40 hours per week. Teaching faculty do work a full load. Research faculty actually work longer hours even if they teach less because they must produce papers and funded grants, as well as mentor students in research.

In reply to Rayofreason's post:

"A professor at CSU-LA is making $81,000/9 months (see http://losangeles.stateuniversity.com / for data). Benefits are near 25%, so take total compensation to be $100K."

This refers to a tenured full professor who probably has been in the system for twenty years or more. Assistant, associate professors and non-tenured faculty don't make this amount--not by a long shot. The majority of courses are taught by part time faculty--lecturers--a trend that has grown in the last two decades. These part time freeway flyers are in essence the daily hires. There are entire departments who haven't hired anyone into the tenure track, full time ranks in decades, but have depended on the cheap labor of part time lecturers.

Another way the public isn't aware of as to how the CSU's have been saving money is through the so called Faculty early retirement plan (FERP). Senior faculty who have become too expensive, i.e. those Rayof reason talks about who do make his figures, are encouraged to retire,but they are allowed to continue to teach reduced class loads. The CSU in effect has shoved their compensation onto the state pension. These faculty are paid for the courses they teach, if they choose to do so, --however many they choose. The CSU presidents love the FERP--they get experienced, highly qualified teachers but someone else pays and the campus in question gets to save money in wages. So what have they done with their savings? Your guess is as good as mine.

A huge issue right now in the CSU is one involving transparency where it comes to finances. Selected faculty get to be on finance committees but for the most part this is pretty much tokenism as administrators (i.e. the really highly paid (in the six figures) vice presidents, presidents, etc) pretty much manage to maneuver their way around whatever appears to be recommendations from the the rest of the university.

The number of $81k/yr comes directly from

http://losangeles.stateuniversity.com

and it is the AVERAGE salary for all full-time faculty. It is NOT the salary number only for senior faculty. And I only used the number for full-time faculty to do the calculation of the cost of instruction.

You are correct that non-tenured faculty do not make, on average, 81K/yr. It is probably closer to 32k/yr for a 4-course per semester load if they are teaching a lecturer rates of 4k/course. But I did not add the number of part-time faculty to the cost of instruction.

So I stand by my original calculation. A tuition rate of $6.4k/year is either close to or under the real cost of operating the university.

The only way there will be a tuition increase of 32% is if the taxes expire. We have to put pressure on the Republicans and the governor in order to extend the taxes.

...against this...