CSU Budget Priorities for Academic Year 2007-08

AS-2749-06/FGA - May 4-5, 2006

ATTACHMENT 1 TO AS-2749-06/FGA
ATTACHMENT 2 TO AS-2749-06/FGA

RESOLVED: That the Academic Senate of the California State University (CSU) endorse the following budget priorities, many of which were delineated in AS-2654-04/FGA, (CSU Budget Priorities for Academic Year 2005-06) and AS-2694-05/FGA (CSU Budget Priorities for Academic Year 2006-07), and call upon the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees (BOT) to secure the resources needed to ensure quality and authentic access for students seeking to graduate from the CSU:

• To fund enrollment at the true cost of the delivery of high-quality educational programs;
• To reduce student/faculty ratios to their pre-1990 levels;
• To (1) raise faculty salaries to the level of California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) comparison universities and (2) raise staff salaries to comparable local market levels;
• To implement ACR 73;
• To address long-term needs for deferred maintenance and for enhanced technology and library resources;

RATIONALE: In recent years the CSU experienced a series of major reductions in its operating budget, totaling in excess of $520 million, as a result of fiscal constraints faced by the state of California. One consequence of the budget cuts is that the CSU has been unable to address many of its long-standing challenges, including:

• The University's continuing difficulty in hiring faculty due to, among other reasons, the fact that faculty salaries in the CSU lag well below those of comparable institutions, California's high cost of living, and teaching loads that are among the highest in the nation;
• High student faculty ratios and the inability of the University to return the ratios to the lower levels that existed before the budget cuts of the early 1990s;
• The University's inability to support fully the provisions of ACR 73 regarding tenured/tenure-track faculty ratios;
• Low staff morale due to stagnation of their salaries;
• The lack of resources necessary to address infrastructure needs in areas such as deferred maintenance, enhanced technology, and library resources.

Many of these needs have reached crisis proportions.

With the recent improvement in the state's fiscal situation and a commitment by California's leadership over the next several years to restore in part the drastic budget reductions experienced by the CSU, it is imperative that the CSU begin to address these on-going needs.