Ongoing Budget Augmentations (Permanent) | 2005/06 Budgetary Challenges | 2007/08 Support Budget

The CSU’s annual support budget increase is primarily dedicated to serving new students and funding annual base funding cost increases. These needs are included in the Higher Education Compact. The Compact, however, does not provide funding for new initiatives to address pressing state needs and priorities neglected during years when the state resources were insufficient to fully address education program requirements. The “above Compact” funding requested in the 2007/08 CSU Support Budget addresses these two types of needs. Permanent funding is requested in six areas:

2007/08 ONGOING AND PERMANENT BUDGET AUGMENTATION REQUESTS
Program/Need	Request ($Millions)
Applied Research	$12.0
Clinical Nursing Support	$4.3
Mathematics and Science Teachers	$2.0
One Percent Compensation	$27.6
Special Education Teachers Initiative	$1.2
Student Services Initiative	$24.6
	$71.7

Detailed Budget Change Proposals (BCPs) describing each of these programs were submitted to the Department of Finance. Summaries of these programs are provided below.

The CSU is requesting $12 million to perform applied research in four areas critical to California’s economic well-being: Agriculture ($5 million), Biotechnology ($3 million), Marine Studies ($3 million), and Fresh Water Studies ($1 million). These four programs share several common elements:

Agriculture: Agricultural enterprises contribute in excess of $32 billion to the California economy and are essential to the state’s economic vitality. The CSU produces over 52 percent of California’s college graduates in agriculture-related majors. Closely related to and integrated with its core educational mission, the CSU is also a leader in performing applied research to improve the efficiency, productivity, profitability, and sustainability of California agriculture and its allied industries.

Biotechnology: By 2003, revenues from biotech products had increased to $39.2 billion nationally, and employment in the industry was increasing at roughly 15 percent per year. More significantly, California is home to at least one-half of the biotechnology companies in the country and more than two-thirds of the workers in this industry are at the bachelor of science or master of science degree levels. California currently is, and has the potential to continue to be, the leader in this increasingly important, knowledge-based industry.

Marine Studies: California has the largest ocean economy in the nation, totaling over $42 billion in gross state product in 2000. And yet, the coastal margins of California are coming under increasing pressure from land use, growing volumes of commercial trade, invasive species, harmful algal blooms, marine pathogens, and declining fisheries, all of which are taking place within a context of climate change. Given the importance of the coastal environment to California (and the nation) and the emergence of a wide range of new threats, expenditures (of resources and intellect) to preserve and protect the quality of the coastal environment are essential to maintaining the economic vitality of the state.

Fresh Water Studies: Water is critical to the future growth and the quality of life in California and, therefore, ensuring the availability of affordable and adequate supplies of high-quality water is among the state’s highest priorities. Fulfilling this goal demands an integrated and concerted research program. The fresh water research activities in the CSU address the critical policy and research needs of agricultural, urban, and environmental water uses in the state of California.

Each year, California’s demand for nurses exceeds the number of students who are prepared to enter the nursing workforce. By the year 2010, over 47,000 additional nurses will be needed to serve California’s population. Currently, California’s institutions of higher education graduate approximately 6,000 nurses annually. To meet state demand, California higher education will need to graduate 15,000 nurses annually—250 percent of the current number of nursing graduates. Only a fractional number of students seeking admission to CSU clinical nursing programs can be accommodated due to the limited numbers of qualified faculty, facilities, and clinical placement opportunities in health care facilities. The California State University, already the major source of new nurses in the state, is eager to increase the number of students it prepares for careers in nursing, but to do so will require significantly greater state support because higher faculty salaries, small class sections, and specialized equipment needs make nursing programs more than twice as costly to offer compared to “average” instructional programs. This $4.3 million support budget request would allow the CSU to serve an additional 340 full-time equivalent students in nursing programs annually.

California’s industries depend upon a workforce that has a strong foundation in mathematics, science, and technology. Creating that scientifically and technologically literate workforce begins in primary and secondary schools and depends on highly qualified mathematics and science teachers. Unfortunately, California’s schools are experiencing a severe shortage of qualified mathematics and science teachers.

Over the next five years, California is projected to need an average of more than 4,400 new mathematics and science teachers per year. Recruiting students into these fields, however, has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Currently, the annual production of math and science teachers in the state averages around 2,000. The CSU is currently the largest producer of mathematics and science teacher credential candidates, with approximately 50 percent of the teachers in these fields coming from the CSU. Because of the CSU’s experience and ability with educating teacher credential candidates, the CSU is uniquely positioned to expand the number of students with concentration in mathematics and science education. This supplemental funding request of $2 million will allow the CSU to expand the initiatives of the 23 CSU campuses designed to double math and science teacher production and establish three CSU Regional Math and Science Teacher Recruitment Centers. These centers will play an essential role in increasing recruitment into math and science credential programs among a range of target populations.

Total compensation packages are critical in attracting and retaining a highly motivated and qualified workforce. Over the past five years, however, salary increases for all employee groups in the CSU have not kept pace with increases for employees in other sectors of the state and national economy. The lack of funding for adequate compensation increases between 2001/02 and 2004/05 further compounded the problem. Based on U.S. Department of Labor reports, public and private sector average increases in employment salaries and wages totaled 14.5 percent over the fiveyear period from 2001 to 2005 while salary increases in the CSU over that same period totaled only about 7 percent.

The persistent salary lags have contributed to the university’s challenges to retain and recruit critical faculty and staff and could impact the ability of the CSU to meet educational and business operational goals and requirements. This supplemental funding request of $27.6 million would further assist the CSU to address the impact of minimal compensation funding in prior years on all CSU employee groups.

In 2004/05, school districts around the state recruited approximately 4,000 new special education teachers. Unfortunately, the total state production of special education teachers in that year was only approximately 2,800. The disparity between the supply and the demand for special education teachers is a relatively recent development driven by changes in class sizes and federal mandates. CSU campuses currently prepare approximately 1,860 special education teachers per year, approximately two-thirds of all the special education teachers prepared in the entire state. As the major source of all teacher candidates in the state, the CSU is uniquely positioned to increase the production of special education teacher candidates by leveraging its existing program resources. This supplemental funding request of $1.2 million will allow the CSU to expand its production of new special education teachers by between 6 percent to 10 percent beginning in 2007/08 and annually thereafter for the next decade. This range reflects a minimum baseline increase of 6 percent annually, with the range of 6 percent to 10 percent dependent on a range of K-12 education factors. This new source of special education teachers will make a significant contribution to the state’s shortage of these teachers, and the increased placement of these new teachers in high-need school districts will help fulfill federal requirements.

During the most recent recession in California, state budget cuts and unfunded mandatory cost increases to the CSU accumulated to more than $500 million. During this period, the Student Services division experienced greater support budget reductions as funds were redirected from Student Services to instructional programs. This request of $24.6 million will allow Student Services divisions on all 23 campuses to restore and expand the level of services necessary to ensure student success and accomplish the goals of the Trustees’ to shorten the time to degree and raise graduation success rates.

This request of $24.6 million has two parts: (1) $16 million for Student Services for Success, and (2) $8.6 million for Student Services for Authentic Access. The multifaceted Student Services for Success initiative includes $7.5 million to improve advising for undergraduate degree majors; $1.5 million to strengthen programs for new student orientation where students and advisors develop the student’s initial academic plan; $4.5 million for staffing of learning centers, tutoring centers, and study skills help centers; and $2.5 million for additional articulation staff to work collaboratively with their community college counterparts to ensure that courses taken at a California Community College are consistent with subject majors at the CSU. The Student Services for Authentic Access initiative includes $2 million to ensure access by disabled persons to information and learning offered via information technology, $1 million to ensure university access to hearing-impaired persons by providing interpreting and captioning services (services that both state and federal law require campuses to provide), $4.2 million to provide Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) grants to the estimated 4,770 students who demonstrated an unmet financial need, and $1.5 million to improve communications for the Early Assessment Program, accelerate deployment of online degree programs, and increase participation of historically underrepresented groups in college.