CSULB FEA Professors Micheal Pounds and Brian Alan Lane met with CSULB VP Administration & Finance Mary Stephens on Friday Aug. 7. The motive for this wide-ranging 1½ hour meeting was to analyze the operating budget of the University in the context of mandated reductions, and to bring this information back to faculty and students.
The result of the meeting is that Pounds and Lane believe, more than ever, that the administration is choosing to cut direct costs of education in favor of maintaining administrative salaries, benefits and perquisites. Pounds and Lane believe, now more than ever, that administrative spending could be curtailed to reach overall reduction targets without cutting instruction.
The following points were made or acknowledged by Stephens at the meeting and/or in the University’s financial documents as analyzed by Pounds and Lane:
1. The 2008-09 CSULB budget contains substantial unspent funds in the form of reserves, carryover savings, and allocations made but not designated or actually paid out. As of the end of the 2009 academic year, there should have been a total of approximately $10 million in these unspent funds. Virtually all of this money is designated for administrative divisions, not for colleges and departments or faculty, and, according to Stephens, the administration will not re- designate it.
2. The savings generated by faculty furloughs is approximately $11 million, so virtually all of that could have been covered by unspent cash on hand instead of furloughs.
3. In light of the budget crisis, there is a moratorium on searching for and hiring new full-time faculty, even where needed to replace departed faculty. However, there is no such moratorium with respect to hiring administrators. The administration continues to this day to hire new administrators and to re-up administrators, negotiating guaranteed multiple year deals (usually three year deals) which cannot be abrogated. This makes it certain that (a) there will be further cuts to teaching this Fall 2009, and (b) the 2010-11 budget reductions of $30 million will require dramatic cuts in teachers and course offerings.
4. Services to students and faculty can and will be cut as of 2010-11, with no explanation from the administration as to why these cuts should not have begun in 2009-10 in lieu of cuts to teaching and increases in student fees.
5. Upper level administrators (and their assistants) earn salaries, benefits, and perks in amounts dramatically higher than tenured faculty. The justification from Stephens is that these are competitive market prices and that administrators are somehow “entitled” to job security which is equivalent to tenure. However, the names and numbers show that administrators earn more than tenured faculty over both the short-term and the long-term, that CSULB’s upper level administrators are mostly tenured CSULB faculty rather than competitive outside hires, and that these faculty are thereby bumped up to administrative posts and rewarded with increased salaries and benefits while still maintaining lifetime retreat rights to their departments. Even more, the bumped-up salaries represent lifetime cost increases as these individuals are allowed to retire and receive pensions at their highest pay rates.
6. The administration believes that it has increased its infrastructure and committed to spending at the behest of faculty and students who requested services, despite the duplication of many of these services at the college and departmental levels. The administration is a true believer in itself and its mission, and believes that the University would be a different and less desirable place were the administration not to remain intact at current levels.
CONCLUSION & SOLUTION:
Pounds and Lane beg to differ with the administration’s position as to all the above. It has become clear that the administration is out to protect itself and justify itself even at the expense of education. Sadly, much of the administration is composed of faculty who have found the path to administrative riches as their former colleagues are furloughed or fired.
The solutions are simple and obvious:
1. A moratorium on hiring new administrators or replacing departed administrators or re-upping administrators for more than one year at a time.
Example of administrative abuse requiring this solution: Our Provost Karen Gould recently resigned. She had two Assistant Provosts with guaranteed multi- year contracts paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to do jobs which Stephens could not define but which were totally unnecessary only a few years ago when there were no Assistant Provosts. One of the current Assistant Provosts should have been moved up to Interim Provost with no raise in salary. Instead, a Dean was moved up and given a new contract for more money than he had earned as Dean. This caused the Associate Dean to become the Interim Dean — with a new contract and higher earnings — followed by the impending new hire of a new Associate Dean. And there will now be costly searches for permanent appointments in all these areas.
The departure of Gould could and should have resulted in a substantial cost savings to the University, but, instead, it has unnecessarily added to spending commitments during a time of fiscal crisis.
Further example: At the same time as all this new administrative hiring and movement have occurred, the Film and Electronic Arts Department has had its external search for a new Chair rescinded and no replacements allowed for three tenured and tenure track faculty departures, all due to the new budget constraints which, once again, seem to be borne by faculty and departments but not by the administration.
2. Faculty and the CFA should be directly involved and included with equal voice to that of administrators in budget reduction meetings and planning.
Example of administrative abuse requiring this solution: Administrators hire administrators and set their ever-increasing salaries, benefits, and perks. Search and review committees are not used in all cases, but, when used, they are pressured by administrators and, in the end, are only advisory in nature. There are very few, if any, instances of review committees turning out an upper level administrator.
Without the check and balance of faculty, staff, and student representation in this hiring process — including the determination of whether administrative jobs are necessary or in fact redundant — the process will forever be open to charges of cronyism and featherbedding.
3. The CFA furlough vote should be revoked or otherwise be deemed mooted since it was based on misinformation provided by the CSU as to ramifications with respect to faculty terminations, and since it took place in Summer when sufficient faculty was not present and available for consideration, discussion, and debate. At the very least, a re-vote is called for.
4. The CFA should call for faculty to jointly choose the same furlough days as “blue flu” strike days, thereby “closing” the University on those days.
The administration believes that the University cannot function without the administration, refusing to respect that faculty serve the real mission of the University in teaching its students.
Faculty and the CFA can recover their collective power by shutting down the University on the days of their choice, and this furlough strike would not result in any additional loss of income for faculty. Therefore, furlough days need to be recast as Action Days where faculty and students meet and become proactive in getting the word out to the community and the legislature that tax dollars have been mismanaged for the benefit of administrators rather than education, and that we are all mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
