When President Koester and I meet with faculty for either lunch or coffee, we often field questions about how California State University, Northridge “works.” Clearly, the most important work occurs in the classrooms, studios, and labs. Across the University we are organized to support this work. Often we function like a business. We have customers to attend to, budgets to stay within, and work to deliver on time. We are like a think tank, and we are like a service agency and a counseling clinic, too. We are like an ISP, a hotel, an emergency room, a union shop, an incubator, and a show of shows. Each term is a useful fiction; it describes a part or function of the University. None of them, however, names the whole. Nor do the separate parts or functions represent the whole.
There are practical and ethical reasons to know how the University operates. A few words on the ethical follow here. The rest addresses the context for the practical. I say “context” because other documents like the New Faculty Survival Guide and the Top Ten Policies Every New Faculty Should Know are thorough how-to guides.
According to the traditional order of things in Academic Affairs, we see business (not the College!) as “filthy lucre.” The business side of the University taints teaching and learning. Personnel in cash services are seen as the “money changers in our temple.” A moral imperative should fund academic affairs, we believe. We arrange parts or functions of the University in a hierarchy of respectability, with reflection (us) at the top, and utilities (maintenance) at the bottom. We forget that such mapping imposes distance and differentiation on units that are interdependent and sometimes interchangeable (as when students intern in cash services, or physical plant greens the campus).
HOW IS CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE FUNDED?
SCHOOL (’06-07) |
FEES |
STATE |
RATIO |
Texas-Pan American |
2470 |
4991 |
2.02 |
New Mexico Highlands |
2706 |
11693 |
4.32 |
Northeastern State University |
2877 |
4586 |
1.59 |
Northridge |
3103 |
6365 |
2.05 |
Southeastern Louisiana |
3274 |
3377 |
1.03 |
Prairie View |
3659 |
8681 |
2.37 |
Boise State University |
4059 |
5428 |
1.34 |
Anchorage |
4075 |
8222 |
2.02 |
Central Washington University |
4415 |
4883 |
1.11 |
SUNY at Albany |
4443 |
9944 |
2.24 |
Eastern Washington |
4499 |
4416 |
0.98 |
Georgia State University |
4667 |
7771 |
1.67 |
Lamar University |
4752 |
4785 |
1.01 |
Sam Houston State University |
4914 |
3897 |
0.79 |
Western Washington |
5347 |
4657 |
0.87 |
Arizona State West Campus |
5430 |
7927 |
1.46 |
Southern Oregon University |
5452 |
3564 |
0.65 |
James Madison University |
5698 |
4388 |
0.77 |
Grand Valley State University |
6319 |
3081 |
0.49 |
AV |
|
|
1.49 |
Northridge depends on a state subsidy (the general fund), which includes student fees. Supplementing that are self-supported dollars from research grants, gifts, extended learning, sales of books and foods, state bonds, etc. The state combines part-time students into full-time “equivalents.” Thirty semester credits per year equal a full-time equivalent student. General fund dollars come per FTE student. The ratio of general funds to fees in the CSU is about 2:1. According to the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS), most of the other states with similar Carnegie classification (M.A. 1-2) have higher fees. Their fees average 1.5:1 against state support.
Like every other state, California does not fund the full cost of higher education. It funds marginal cost--mainly the estimated average cost of new professors, support personnel, and infrastructure. The state also estimates the size of the college-going population, extrapolated from the number of eligible high school seniors and community college students. The budget for the CSU marries these calculations in this way. Marginal cost for the new hire and support is divided by the number of full-time students that the state views as an average workload for a professor. Then, marginal cost, divided by this number of students, is multiplied by the total number of full-time students that the state sets as the CSU’s target. The result is the CSU’s general fund from the state. (So, @$182,000 MC/ 19 FTES=$9,600 MC per FTES; $9,600 X 26,500 FTES at CSUN=$254,000,000. Local fees and resources bring that to @$300,000,000 in 2007-08.)
State funding is marginal---for the new—because California assumes that each campus has an inventory of usable equipment and an extensive workforce. Marginal funding, therefore, must support new equipment and replace the old. It also contains negotiated and inflationary adjustments for the salaries of employees. The older the university, the less sufficient is marginal funding for covering the cost of the new and gradually replacing the old. Over time, inflation increases the cost of replacement. In theory, this could be cured with an inflation index and a periodic infusion of funds to refresh out-dated formulas. In practice, this happens rarely. Budgeted for IBM typewriters and mainframes in the 1980s, the CSU now supports distributed networks of wireless and wired servers, desktops, laptops, digital phones, palm-helds, and peripherals. Finally, marginal funding is an average. The campuses, therefore, must distribute this money differentially. Engineering, for example, costs more than Philosophy to staff and equip.
INSTR 34% |
EQUIP |
AC SUPP |
INST SUPP |
Let’s conclude with a few more details. The chart on the left shows the current proportions in the marginal funding formula. The marginal funding per FTE student is multiplied by the average workload of a professor to determine cost. This average is known as the SFR: FTE Students to FTE Faculty Ratio. The CSU derives the SFR from past practice and national trends. The Department of Finance surveys national trends to come up with a formula for marginal funding, as does the Legislative Analyst. In conferences with these parties, the CSU tries to insure that the final formula nears the compensation agreed to in union contracts. However, labor contract negotiation and budget allocation are related but different processes.
WHY DO WE SUPPORT THE BOOKSTORE AND FOOD SERVICES? WHAT DOES THE CORPORATION DO?
EXCLUSIVE OF PARKING, RESIDENTIAL, STUDENT AID, AND BUILDINGS FUNDS, THESE ARE GENERAL PROPORTIONS FOR CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE. |
|
FEES |
27% |
STATE |
55% |
EXTNSN |
4% |
UCORP CONT |
1% |
GRANTS |
6% |
ADV |
7% |
Actually, they support us. As explained above, there is a gap between marginal funding and actual costs. What do campuses do? They spin off agencies and corporations, to offload costs and to generate dollars. By running food services and the bookstore—or rather, subleasing them—the University Corporation helps the University to conserve the general fund for education. The spin-off generates revenues from sales that cover its costs, saves for future investment, and returns a dividend to the University. The Tseng College of Extended Learning works similarly, although it delivers learning, not commodities and other services. By law, self-supported entities must reimburse the campus for the use of campus resources. By law, the ones that depend on user fees or public bonds can spend earnings only on purposes that link back to the activities that generated the earnings. As an example, the parking fund must be spent on improvements to parking; it cannot be spent, say, on the library or information technology.
The proposal to provide faculty housing at a discounted rate depends on a similar approach. A non-profit corporation, tied to the University Corporation, borrows non-general fund dollars to capitalize the building of houses and condos. The housing can be sold below market because the University holds the land. Buyers pay a lower price for just the structure, not the land. But they must resell to a member of the University community. The initial price depends on two other calculations. What is the size of the debt that the corporation can assume? What proportion of the overall costs of construction does this debt represent? Unless a donor appears to provide funding, the establishment of a child-care facility for faculty and staff would work similarly. An entity apart from the general fund would assume debt to start it. Fees would buy down the debt over a long period of time. The facility would reimburse the campus for the use of space, if it is located on campus.
SO, WHY GROW?
Well, we are told to. But there are other reasons beyond serving the state. With growth comes funding for new buildings, according to formulas that multiply the number of users by the square feet assigned to a function. These buildings and their funds for equipment are another major way that we transfuse new funds into the budget. However, building funds depend on voters’ support for bonds. Using bonds reserves the general fund for direct educational expenses. But the public’s demand for the expansion of higher education does not always match the bankers’ rating of state debt and the public’s willingness to vote for or invest in bonds. Growth entails risk; not growing entails the certainty of budget cuts. Growth enables us to offset inflation with new dollars. This is a nibbling cannibalism: spending new money on increasing costs for older items eats away at money for the new. But if a campus does not grow, then increasing costs require cuts to the base budget.
SO, RAISE THE FEES; BETTER YET, STORM THE LEGISLATURE, RIGHT?
For many years, Californians regarded the CSU as a basic service that should be nearly free for the children of the GI generation. Today, we still cannot call tuition, tuition. We say fee. Fee implies a token charge. The fiscal context has changed since the 1960s, but Californians’ bargain-basement view of tuition barely has budged. In the late 1970s, voters approved propositions that limited property taxes, expanded the criminal justice system, and guaranteed K12 a big share of the budget. At the same, the state absorbed increasing costs for human services and health care. The CSU system lacked the leverage to fight off these movements that limited its share of the budget. Opponents also pointed out that state support for the CSU exceeded support at similar universities in other states.
To increase the general fund, one would need to battle against K-12, health care, and prisons—all of which have powerful lobbies. Or one could lobby for higher taxes! Despite all this, forces beat back a steady increase in student fees to supplement the state appropriation. While the Board of Trustees can recommend fee increases, the legislature and governor must approve. They yield to the public preference for low student fees. The pressure on the state’s budget and the distaste for tuition are so acute that higher education, including the UC and the community colleges, rarely wins significant dollars for new programs. Recent funding for stem cell research and teacher preparation are exceptions. They indicate the importance of direct social benefit in support of an exception.
WHAT CHALLENGES ARE AHEAD?
The new contract for faculty is well deserved. But it poses a challenge. The state pledged to fund a 16% increase in faculty pay in the Compact between the CSU and the governor. The faculty union and CSU negotiated the contract after the CSU and governor agreed to the Compact. The contract records about a 27% increase. On top of that, one has to account for accrued benefits, as well as a deserved but unfunded partial match of 1% to the other CSU unions as a result of the negotiations. We are the beneficiaries of two incongruent bargaining processes, on different time lines: the CSU and CA in Compact; the CSU and CFA in union contract.
It is simplistic to blame any one entity for these differences. They are embedded in the business practices in the political sphere and are characteristic of American economic practice. Revenues and expenditures never match. Spenders are from Venus. Funders are from Mars. To confront this challenge and to capitalize on its good—the salary increases—we must be clear-eyed. Some claim that the CSU does not need increased fees to bridge these gaps. Yet the California Post-Secondary Commission (CPEC) peer universities, which we use for salary comparisons, have student fees that are much higher than fees in the CSU.
Further, the CSU has suffered cuts of $500,000,000 (see the third reply under Reality) in the last five years. We have cut $15,000,000 out of the campus budget since 2004 as our share. Substantial gaps like these require a mix of self-supported efforts like grants and contracts, predictable adjustments to fees and state subsidy, and fund-raising.
For every $180,000,000 (go to Budget link; from there to last chart) that the state delivers from the general fund, students pay $90,000,000 in fees, University Advancement secures $25,000,000, grants and contracts wins $25,000,000, and extended learning gains revenues of $12,000,000. Advancement funds, grants and contracts, and extension revenue are largely restricted to specific uses: a scholarship endowed by a donor, a science instrument supported by NSF, or salaries provided by the Tseng College of Education. They supplement but can never substitute for the general fund and fees, which underwrite the University’s essential educational activities. Beyond the projects that they support directly, grants and contracts and Extended Learning yield indirect sums to the University, totaling nearly $3,000,000 or 4-6% of revenues. These indirect sums pay back departments for wear and tear. They also represent a return on investment, which acts as an incentive to be entrepreneurial. 0ver the next ten years, we need to step up self-support activities and student fees to minimize the steady erosion of the purchasing power of the general fund.
WHERE DO STUDENTS COME FROM?
The vast majority of CSU students come from a service region that each campus negotiates with the system. Students from the designated region get first preference if demand exceeds the campus’s capacity. Each year the campus receives an FTE target that moves it closer to the master plan figure that the system has approved, based on a forecast of demand. Usually the perimeter of a region represents a tolerable commute, excepting at the rural CSUs. The system Master Plan envisioned a commuting, not residential student body. The authors did not foresee the effects of congestion and the escalation of fuel costs.
ARE THEY COLLEGE READY?
By statute, the CSU must admit the top third of high schools’ graduating class, according to a scale that combines GPA and SAT or ACT. Students also must complete college-going requirements in courses. Programs that are impacted by many more acceptable applicants than there are open seats can impose more restrictive criteria. Preference always must be shown to applicants in the service area of the university. Out-of-state applicants have stiffer requirements.
The ACT or SAT scores of CSU Northridge undergraduates are in the bottom half nationally. Across the system, over 40% must take developmental work in math and English to be ready for college-level courses. K-12 and the CSU have aligned curriculum, not expectations and outcomes. We must work with K-12 to get college-going rates above 50%. And we must step up efforts to improve the preparation of K12 teachers so that pupils who go to college, go with the necessary skills. Ideology and institutional self-interest complicate such efforts, though. “Developmental” and “remedial” nudge each other out of the lexicon, symbolizing disagreement about what high school graduation and “college-ready” imply about literacy. To get out of this muddle, educators must view themselves not in segments but in K-16; they must reach consensus about what K16 is for, even as in the present, they develop—or remediate--students’ skills.
WHO ARE THEY?
California State University, Northridge is one of the most diverse campuses in the CSU. The CSU is one of the most diverse systems in the nation. Over 10% of CSU students are immigrants, refugees, or non-resident aliens. Many Northridge students are the first in their families to attend college. English is not the primary language at home. Throughout the CSU, Hispanic and Asian students make up the largest number of students for whom languages spoken at home and at school are different. 40% of the households in the state either switch between English and other languages at home, or do not speak English at all.
The San Fernando Valley is changing. Forty years ago, inhabitants were largely Anglo. Today nearly 40% are Hispanic, and nearly 10% are Asian. 40% of the Valley residents were born abroad. Emigrants and their children from southeastern Europe, western Asia, and the Middle East have surged into California State University, Northridge. Many do not classify themselves as white. White implies Anglo.
For students, assimilation requires economic and social adjustment; but it does not entail cultural amputation. The CSU and Northridge are global classrooms. Many students are familiar with several languages, but are modestly skilled in English. According to survey data, they aspire to the American dream of wealth through career mobility. Some are attached ambivalently to cultural and religious values that do not mesh easily with secularism.
Professors, therefore, cannot assume that students share a common literacy or similar values. Fluency about popular culture often masks differences. Valley students come from a majority of households in which Spanish, southeastern European, and Asian cultures and languages are the norm. Professors can assume that few students know how an American university functions, respect knowledge as an end in itself, and know what it means to be a professor. Having grown up in polyglot Los Angeles, many students are adept at negotiating results in conversation by switching and sharing codes. This facility, however, does not imply a mastery of written Standard English. That is why the Learning Resource Center supports tutors and programs to help both students and professors. The Tseng College offers special programs for international students, scholars, and teachers in transition.
More than half of Northridge’s freshman students—more than a third of the CSU’s—qualifies for federal and state grants and loans (see annual reports under University Profiles). Students average more than twenty hours per week at work (go to Special Reports and from there to the National Survey of Student Engagement near the bottom of the links). Family need and individual desires for consumables contribute to this, as well. The effects on learning are clear. Students usually take longer than four years to graduate. Their focus is not solely on college. Indebtedness affects choices of majors and careers. Competing pressures cause some students to abandon courses, without telling anyone, and ultimately to stop out of college (see Reports under Retention and Graduation Rates).
WHO ARE TRANSFER STUDENTS?
About half of the CSU’s students transfer into the system after completing the prerequisite curriculum and an associate of the arts degree (A. A.) in a community college. They must have a 2.0 GPA in transferable courses. Many did not meet the CSU entry requirements for college or did not even think of college as teenagers. Older than entering freshmen, they are more determined; and they graduate at a higher rate (navigate to Graduation and Transfer Rates). There is no substantial evidence that they are academically different than entry freshmen, although their pathways into the CSU might imply otherwise.
HOW DO WE GET GRADUATE STUDENTS?
Undergraduates are admitted by Admissions and Records. Graduate students are admitted by academic departments, with help from Admissions and Records to assemble the files. Departments admit graduate students as classified (ready to be begin advanced work) or as unclassified, (post baccalaureate status until they finish prerequisites).
WHEN ARE STUDENTS ADMITTED? WHY ARE THEIR FILES INCOMPLETE?
Students apply in two cycles, for fall and spring. Normally we do not accept new freshmen in spring. For a fall term, applicants usually must submit materials six to eight months ahead. The admissions process tries to impose reason and predictability on fluctuating numbers of applicants. Planners calculate a yield of students projected to be enrolled in week four, known as “census” since its numbers generate the budget. The projection for census depends on the estimated numbers of admitted students. That number depends on the number of applicants. Applicants, of course, evolve out of the number of college-ready high school seniors.
Planners know that the yield rate for local applicants is greater than for out-of-area students. We construct a similar equation for returning students. Now, this would be straightforward if the economy and policy about applications were stable. But career opportunities change because of the economy, either requiring or preempting college. Incomes and housing sales underwrite or undermine college funds. The CSU changes its policy on the number of applications a student can submit, when an applicant must enroll, and when s/he must pay. Few campuses track recruitment in a way that could refine predictability. Hitting an enrollment goal is like spinning blindfolded along a cliff, hoping to fall into a pasture, not into the abyss. The CSU also varies the penalty for missing enrollment targets.
Freshmen do not finish high school until June, and transfers likewise do not get degrees until then. So, we admit on the presumption that they will maintain eligibility and graduate. We depend on other schools to process certification. Like us, they simultaneously are taking in new applicants. Although many files transfer digitally, delays sometimes occur. When we advise admitted students, we often must invoke comparable cases from the past and recommend accordingly. This is trying but not too hard. Even without math and English placement test scores, we know enough about the implication of patterns in high school to advise presumptively. Even without transcripts and clarity about one’s major, we know how to advise a transfer student into upper-division general education courses and electives. We have fifty years of data.
I’VE TRIED TO UNDERSTAND THE CSU SYSTEM, BUT I CAN’T. WHAT DOES IT DO?
In the 1950s, Clark Kerr and others fashioned a Master Plan for three tiers of higher education in California: research universities, master’s institutions, and community colleges. These three types of schools would form an archipelago of invention and job creation up and down the state, within commuting distance for most students. Transfer was an implicit promise that late bloomers could advance from one tier to the next.
The CSU began as a mix of already existing public universities. Several were normal schools or polytechnics, and others were new campuses. The CSU mission has been to train a burgeoning white collar workforce. The schools were consolidated under a chancellor and staff who represented the system in Sacramento. They blocked end-runs around system policy by individual campuses to the legislature. As campuses grew in the 1960s, the central office grew, too. It gathered and allocated funds, planned space and student numbers, and regulated curriculum.
Besides being the intermediary with the governor and legislature, the chancellor’s staff represents the CSU before local, state, and federal agencies. In due course, it has developed policies, executive orders, and guidelines that give particular meaning to more general formulations in the California Education Code. Appointed by the governor and advised by a Board of Trustees whom the governor also appoints, the chancellor selects campus presidents and presides over their Executive Council, consisting of system executive officers and campus presidents.
Golden Shores (the location of the Chancellor’s Office in Long Beach) often drafts system policy that after consultation, it then revises. Results are compromises that account for the contexts of very different campuses. The Board of Trustees oversees budget, contract negotiations, executive appointments, campus planning, and system performance measures. Yet they also listen to the presidents seriously, and they take advice from a faculty Statewide Senate. This Senate, as old as the CSU, ranges over any topic. Its authority comes mainly from its consultation and persuasiveness, especially on matters of curriculum and governance, with campus faculty Senates and CSU staff. Frequent meetings of system officers with provosts, finance vice presidents, student affairs vice presidents, and information technology officers are part of the consultative culture.
Excepting the Board of Trustees and the Executive Council, these groups rarely synchronize their agendas. Governance as pastiche makes for confusion at times, but it preserves the system Senate’s and campus’s preferences for as much local autonomy as possible. Central authority keeps the system from flying apart; local mission preserves the independent orbits of the campuses. Central planning patrols for redundancy and tries to identify mass efficiencies; local conditions sway the decisions of the campuses.
Efforts to update the nearly fifty-year-old Master Plan have not succeeded. The systems and policymakers have not been able to agree on the functions of the segments, their relative sizes, and sources of support. For example, should the CSU offer doctorates? Should it shrink or grow? Should it depend more on fees and self-support? Without such consensus the CSU system has revised its own vision in “Access to Excellence.” It strikes periodic agreements with the governor on funding, as in the Compact. It works with the community colleges, as in the lower division transfer pattern project, to clarify how courses in two-year colleges can count as general education and beginning major courses in the CSU.
WHAT IS SHARED GOVERNANCE?
Shared governance describes the joint but distinctive roles that administration, campus bodies (through the faculty Senates and councils), unions, and the system (the Statewide Senate and central administration, for example) play in the CSU. Shared governance implies that decisions require consultation. The power to initiate and review curriculum resides in a sequence of faculty committees. Those recommendations, though, require approval and funding by administrators. Workload for professors must observe guidelines bargained in union-system negotiations and following the past practices of each campus. Cooperation depends on civil communication that treats partners fairly and avoids inflammatory language.
HOW DOES CAMPUS GOVERNANCE WORK?
The answer to this depends on the function. Curriculum is largely a faculty prerogative; nonetheless, new majors and graduate programs must be reviewed by the Chancellor’s Office and usually by our accrediting agency, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Further, many programs in the arts, sciences, teaching, and applied fields go before disciplinary accrediting agencies because CSUN faculty and administrators value external recognition. Further, in some fields like teaching, engineering, and accounting, a student can secure a job only if s/he graduates from an accredited program. When faculty propose curriculum, campus peers always review courses and programs to make sure that they align with student demand, available resources, and both college and University missions. Every fifth year, we conduct a program review, examining the evidence that students are learning what the objectives of the program specify; we also review department policies, finances, and governance.
Most of the budget flows through the general fund from the state to the system to the campus to the division to the department. Advancement, the University Corporation, and Extended Learning supplement this money. The president consults with the vice presidents about how to allocate the funds. Typically, expenditures follow divisional plans; both plans and funding pass before the University Planning and Budget Committee for recommendations. Once they receive allocations, local units usually determine what to spend on, as long as they meet the targets and goals that the vice presidents, consulting with one another and their direct reports, specify for them. Academic departments generally establish standards for promotion and tenure. The respective college committee and dean make recommendations, which are based on these local standards, to the provost.
Shared governance also applies to some policies and executive appointments. Faculty committees, operating through the campus Senate, recommend academic practices and policies to the president. If s/he approves, then s/he directs subordinate administers to apply them. Often, the president asks committees to comment on proposed administrative policies, even though they do not require faculty approval. Searches for vice presidents, deans, and a number of directors must conform to policies that the Senate has developed. The campus Personnel Planning and Review Committee monitors the procedures of these searches.
The campus “decider” is the president. S/he has the right, as in faculty personnel review, to designate another administrator to take charge of a function. Campus vice presidents in areas like Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Information Technology, Administration and Finance, and Advancement report to the president. They serve in the president’s cabinet. They also meet as a group to coordinate tactics on challenges that cut across divisions such as the organization of the web and the interconnectedness of policies, business processes, and information systems.
Vice presidents typically have direct reports—associate/assistant vice presidents, deans or directors. About 10% of campus employees are managers—deans, directors, and the like although less than 3% of Academic Affairs personnel are managers. (Technically, chairs are not managers. They still are faculty, according to the Contract.) Unlike a command-and-control model, the University gathers faculty recommendations on policies in the Senate. Several colleges and divisions have similar consultative bodies. Past practice at most CSUs gives faculty, staff, and student deliberative councils the power to recommend policy to the president. Implementation occurs locally.
The campus is not an island unto itself. It exists within the archipelago of the system and is subject to policies that it did not create. Also, at any time federal and state mandates can force change on the campus. Similarly, since the unions bargain centrally, not locally, contracts and grievances can require campuses to change policies and procedures.
There are degrees of autonomy on campus, as well. Entities that oversee commercial operations (Northridge’s University Corporation) and investments (Northridge’s Foundation) report to the president and have campus representatives on their boards. But they function outside of the organization that administers and spends general funds and student fees. As a result, campus politics affect them indirectly, and they have greater latitude in managing resources. All parts of the campus are subject to audits and accreditations. In exchange for public certification, the University conforms to external standards.
SO, HOW DOES MY DEPARTMENT GET ITS TARGET? AND HOW DO I GET MY WORKLOAD?
The CSU assigns an FTE student target to the campus. That target addresses the regional need of high school graduates, transfers, etc. Typically, many CSUs are under-funded because overall need exceeds the capacity of the state to fund fully the enrollment that shows up. Actually all targets for the campuses follow from the demographic projections about eligible applicants that the California Department of Finance updates annually. These projections are married with available funding to determine how much enrollment the state can subsidize in the CSU.
Once we get the target from the system, we parse it by college. We allocate targets locally after we examine national and state trends (we review data at the National Center for Education Statistics and the CSU’s Analytic Studies). In turn, the colleges allocate to the departments. We assign new faculty positions for growth in FTES according to formulas that reflect faculty-to-student ratios in like colleges in the CSU; we adjust those observations by accounting for unusual trends here.
Departments then assign workload to make the FTES target. Before the budget cuts of the early 1990s, the CSU assigned workload formulaically; these equations were gathered in the “orange book.” The mode (seminar, lecture, lab, etc.) and the level (00-299, 300-499, 500-, etc.) of a course were assigned factors that, when multiplied by the credit value, yielded a weighted teaching unit (WTU) total that represented the number of hours for teaching, not preparing. Tenure track faculty carried 15 WTUs, three of which were assigned to scholarly and committee work. The budget cut, though, was so severe that all parties to shared governance accepted a less restricted approach. Campuses and units would meet targets in ways that are equitable but not dictated by formulas.
We follow that approach today. Because we do not insist centrally that everyone teach the same number of courses, departments have the freedom to adjust section sizes to meet demand and concentrate their resources. For instance, a department can meet an annual target of 400 FTES with 20 FTE faculty teaching at an SFR of 20 FTES. If, however, some classes were taught larger at an SFR of 22, then the program would require slightly more than 18 FTE, freeing nearly two FTE to support other activities. At the same time, departments must be responsible. They must use the physical plant and web appropriately; they must design workloads so that they are consistent with department personnel documents; and they must assess the effects of various pedagogies on learning. Above all, they must be equitable, and they must apply what assessment discloses to improve programs.
HOW DO I GET TENURE
At least three levels of documents explain the process. During the year many memos and meetings elaborate. The faculty contract outlines your rights and responsibilities. It sets intervals between submissions, reviews, and responses. It establishes who can serve on personnel committees. In sum, it is a procedural document. Campuses have more specific documents that fit these general conditions into local culture, accounting for specific dates, the organization of the local units, and expectations that are shared universally across departments. Here, those rules are called Section 600. Other levels of documents, either at the college and/or department, supplement procedure with substance. They detail what peers expect from peers as they progress to tenure and promotion. (See, too, the New Faculty Survival Guide and the new faculty orientation, First Things First.)
Generally, these expectations are weighted toward teaching to align with the CSU’s orientation. But all departments require evidence of ongoing currency (in research and/or creative activity) and demonstration of willingness and ability to do appropriate service. Each year, several peers and administrators read an updated file that the candidate assembles. By year six, over twenty peer reviews have occurred. Together, they disclose a pattern upon which faculty and administrators make their final recommendations. Across the CSU, the tenure rate easily exceeds 90% for those who have not withdrawn previously.
By the way, it is not true that the road to tenure is paved by giving high grades, because high grades lead to high student evaluations. As the contract implies, reviewers also consider peers’ observations of one’s teaching and material like syllabi and tests. Chairs comment on the difficulty of teaching the particular subject and format. Grading works best when a faculty in a department share their values with one another. Then students know what to expect, if the values are codified on syllabi.
HOW DO I GET A RAISE
The CSU and the CFA (California Faculty Association) review a study of salaries at peer universities that the parties agreed to years ago (other unions follow a similar process). The California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) updates the figures. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, these schools are not similar to CSUs; their salaries exceed pay at our MA-granting peers. However, as long as the state tolerates this comparison, we should be pleased. The study establishes the salary gap by rank. The parties then negotiate on how far they can go to close the gaps. The CSU usually bids lower since the system engages simultaneously in budget negotiations of its own with the state. The CSU also prioritizes other needs like technology, whereas the faculty union understandably focuses on pay, workload, and faculty rights.
Once the CFA and CSU agree on the amount available, they reconcile how to distribute the money. In recent years, raises have had up to three categories: a general increase for all (GSI), a step increase for those who have not reached the maximum number of annual boosts within each rank (SSI), and a merit award. The step increase is granted to those whom chairs and deans view as making steady progress; merit is granted to fewer, according to negotiated criteria. Raises have averaged 3% per year for the past twenty years. We reserve funds for equity; sometimes, we find evidence of distinctly different salaries for similar work in a department that cannot be explained. And we reserve dollars to counter other universities’ offers to professors whom the department and college want to keep.
WHY ARE NEW HIRES PAID MORE THAN I AM
Compression and inversion have plagued us for a long time. (R. Scott, “See Biscuits, Bicycles and B.Sc's: The Impact of Market Forces on the Management of . . .”Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, October 1987, 157 – 171.) The salary freeze in the CSU several years ago widened the gap. By 2005, we saved enough money to begin to close it. We pay new hires according to what the market bids. Competition among campuses for talent bids up the salary.
Those of us already hired depend on the availability of state funds, which are derivatives of taxes on market activity. Policymakers collect taxes and other resources in the general fund; they disburse money across state agencies according to need, political preference, referenda, entitlements, and mandates. Within these agencies, management and labor often negotiate salaries. Obviously, new salaries respond to inflation and the perceived scarcity of kinds of employees; existing salaries result from political calculation and the actual scarcity of the general fund.
However, existing salaries carry delayed and conditional properties that the person in search of a job might not have. They include health, retirement benefits, and (years toward) tenure. Tenure shelters against economic ills and has cash value. Contributions to health plans go up for CSU employees, eating into salary. But health plans for unattached job seekers have staggering costs.
Periodically, if contracts allow, CSU campuses will direct funds to close these gaps when scarcity and inflation spike new salaries. The money must come from somewhere though, either from new dollars for growth or from base dollars for ongoing programs. So, more money here means less money there.
WHY DOES NOT THE UNIVERSITY JUST TEACH AND RESEARCH?
The Greeks called the variety of activities that educate a people “paedia.” One taught the whole person—the mind, the heart, the soul, the body, and the civic self. Perhaps one day we will have a gene splice or synthetic drug that will bio-engineer learning. Until then, we likely will continue the extracurricular activities that enable students to do as well as learn and to test their own powers of leadership and cultural invention. Erik Erikson recognized that the formation of identity in a complex culture often turned on a psycho-social moratorium. In this pause between adolescence and adulthood, a person fashioned a self out of the heated reaction of peer relations with cultural exploration. But what has happened? On the one hand, the world of work encroaches on this time for reflection. On the other hand, academic specialization dominates the university. It is a spiritually impoverished substitute for human development. We must make campus an oasis for thoughtful development.
Still, we monitor how we spend closely. Because Northridge does not spend lavishly on athletics and ornate events, the proportion of student fees and state funds that go to academic affairs and support is relatively high. In fact, many extracurricular activities depend on fees that the students have assessed themselves through Instructionally Related Activities and Associated Students.
WHY DO WE DO ASSESSMENT
Three waves have carried us this way. Beginning with A Nation at Risk in ’83, policymakers began to question the effectiveness of K12 education. Since universities produce teachers, it was only a matter of time until scrutiny would focus on universities. Default rates on student loans and apparently high non-continuation rates in public colleges and vocational schools lead the public and their representatives to question the value of their investment in education. Then international surveys and exams showed that high school and college graduates in the U. S. were not as well informed as youth in many developing countries. A gathering storm already roared across the land. The global market might respond by moving business to locations where education added more value than in California and the U. S.
Unethical behavior in government, corporations, the church, etc., stimulated the second wave: public distrust that public entities served public ends. Sarbanes-Oxley symbolized this new call to technical accountability and pubic transparency.
The third wave is not punishing but positive. Educators and philosophers recovered pragmatism. Nearly a century ago, John Dewey urged educators to learn how people learned. Then they could take that knowledge, inconclusive as it might be, and deliberate about the inferences in order to arrive at probably effective reforms. This process was incremental, progressive, and unending since our knowledge was gained empirically.
Similarly, today, most accrediting bodies ask basic questions. What is the evidence that students are learning (beyond grades and course test)? What effect does teaching have on learning? What are graduates doing with what they learn? Advanced learning is disciplinary. Thus, we rely on departments to choose their means for assessment. Some use national exams. Others embed locally developed questions in introductory and then senior courses to find the value added. Still others use observations. The University does not rank programs based on the results. Rather, it requires programs to show how what they have learned from assessments affects curriculum and resources.
SO, WHICH IS IT, LEARNING OR GROWTH?
This is the challenge of modernity. We must provide both quality and quantity. California is a large republic and a large market. A republic requires an intelligent public. A market requires the circulation of information. Knowledge informs the public. Choice drives competition. Competition causes providers and producers to be cost-efficient and price-sensitive. Invention fuels the capacity of the system to expand and improve consistency and quality. (Of course, mendacity sometimes misguides choice and misrepresents quality.)
Universities are not exempt from such forces. Learning is both a good in itself and a consumable good. Demand constantly stretches scale. Competition and the visible hand of policymakers contain costs for public systems like the CSU. Success in such an environment requires a university’s consensus on a mission to concentrate its efforts. It depends, too, on sustainable and replicable methods of instruction. And it needs a variety of indictors that, like sensors of neutrinos, can triangulate the elusive interactions between teaching and learning.
Teaching is difficult intellectual work. It requires imagination and empathy to match methods with different goals for different types and situations of learning. It is challenging economic work. One cannot spend equally and endlessly on all methods, goals, and disciplines. It is interesting philosophical, political, and social work. The choice of mission expresses an agenda for change. It requires considerable persuasion to implement this in freebooting communities like universities. It is easy to say that teaching has meaning only through its effect: learning. But that belief entails a responsibility. One must unpack the mediating effects of culture and cognitive difference. And one must do this parsimoniously to match resources to scale.
IS CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE’S MISSION APPROPRIATE?
We are pragmatic. As President Koester said in her Convocation Address, we are “regionally focused.” Our purpose is to add value to the growing, changing region of southern California. We add cultural programs like Central American Studies and Armenian Studies. We expand our capacity and expertise in physical therapy, nursing, small business studies, social work, and the like because of urban needs. And we have a core commitment to integrate care into communities rather than to abandon care—and those in need—to faceless institutions. We can focus this way because, over the years, the general fund has nurtured a substantial array of arts and sciences that provides the skills and intricate contexts for these specializations. We aspire to be even more “nationally recognized”’ than we are, she said. Reputation attracts partners whose work can enhance our effectiveness. Our engagement with effectiveness as the measure of teaching can change the national debate about higher education.
We are learning-centered. That has little to do with a university being small; it has a lot to do with pedagogy. When we define teaching as an effect, not an input, several consequences follow. Assessment becomes a way to gauge not just what individual students glean but what whole programs achieve. Time and space in class, measured in credit hours, appear artificial. It is learning that matters. Pacing can vary among students in a course and across courses. So, can methods of instruction. Clearly, availability of space and utility of technology set conditions for learning. But we do not need to be tied to traditional formulas; and we must have the hubris to acknowledge that teaching-learning is a joint activity, not separate acts by teacher and student.
HOW DOES THIS RECONCILE WITH ACADEMIC FREEDOM?
The AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom, the faculty contract, the Statewide Senate, and our Senate bylaws (Article 2, Section 5) clarify faculty’s rights to teach and research according to their principles and the principles of their disciplines. Like all rights, these are not absolute. They are mediated by one’s voluntary decision to join a department, college, and university. One gains protection—employment—and yields a degree of autonomy. Thus, department consensus legitimately can set standards for curriculum and assessment while the University can institutionalize a mission. Neither prohibits a faculty member from dissent in meetings, committees, publications, and the like. On the other hand, an approved curriculum can require that certain subjects be taught in certain ways. When a department decides to seek accreditation or similar certification, the expectations for conformity with external standards is that much more.
Sometimes, one hears that the University expects professors to be “balanced” on controversial subjects. We do not. We expect intellectual integrity, including the disclosure of assumptions and the respect for professional standards of evidence. All teaching is fundamentally ideological. But we must not confuse the broadly ideological with the narrowly partisan. State law, for example, prohibits the use of state resources, such as the classroom, for electioneering.
As a broker of free expression, the University itself usually is agnostic in politics. Unlike individuals within it, the University will not take a stance on “the war machine” or “free trade.” It is not a challenge to point to the limits of this view. One can imagine rights and obligations that trump this approach. Challenges are integral to a university. In general, such agnosticism preserves forums for such debate. Institutional agnosticism functions as a palisade against external forces. The public and policymakers are predisposed to interpret universities as tools in the hands of radical rightists or leftists. Many are anxious to quash or at least punish internal spokespeople who express the “wrong” ideas.
HOW DO MY RIGHTS STACK UP AGAINST MY STUDENTS’ RIGHTS?
You are the authority. In class, you set expectations and make evaluations. However, students can challenge grades, for example, according to the University’s due process. Each year faculty record thousands of grades. Each year, the grade review panel upholds two reversals, on average. At some time, you can expect a grade challenge. But this should not dampen your commitment. Consistency, equity, fairness, and documentation are the committee’s expectations for faculty. One would not expect otherwise.
Being an authority, however, does not exempt someone from allegations of discrimination. Just as the University cannot preempt a complaint, the Office of Equity and Diversity cannot presume that students’ allegations are either founded or unfounded. Investigators must follow due process. Because you are an authority who grades, your words are considered as actions. This should not chill what you say; it should recall that due process limits authority and establishes processes for complaints.
Occasionally, students’ actions or words will be discriminatory and/or threatening. A reasonable person would infer harm. If the behavior is simply offensive, record it and report it to the department chair; speak to the students about this. If the words or actions are discriminatory or promote a hostile environment, inform the chair and the Office of Student Affairs. When either an administrator or a supervisor hears allegations about gender and racial discrimination, s/he also must contact the Office of Equity and Diversity.
Always consult the Counseling Center, if you want advice. If the words threaten physical harm, tell the chair, the associate dean, the Office of Undergraduate Studies, or the Office of Student Affairs immediately. You can contact campus police directly. But Student Affairs has a fuller repertoire of remedies. If a student is disruptive in class, you can ask the student to leave; you can exercise this authority once over a student (see p. 4 in Responding to Disruptive or Threatening Student Behavior: A Guide for Faculty). Tempting as it might be, do not threaten to kick the alleged offender out of class permanently. You have authority over grades; the University has authority over enrollment. Your prompt and accurate account to the chair, the associate dean, the dean, Undergraduate Studies, and/or Student Affairs informs the University’s decision on how to act.
After the shootings in Virginia, faculty and staff double-checked our capacity to respond. We updated the emergency operations plan and re-trained. Because we are open, we do not profile. Because we are diverse, we must tolerate different styles of communication. Openness implies risk. We all know that puts professors in ambiguous situations. Clarity requires that we work together, in confidence, with speed, and with respect for the professional capabilities of others.
DOES THE UNIVERSITY HAVE A VISION FOR TECHNOLGY?
Yes, it does. But there are many challenges. Unlike old soldiers, old technologies do not fade away. Instead, they remain essential to dwindling numbers of loyal users. IT patches the old into new utilities. But these new utilities evolve, stretching staff who must install generations of the new while doing daily work.
Patching and installing, IT is in the vanguard of an effort to match support to technology. We have a vision. Technology must be accessible. Much of it must be 24/7 and usable remotely. It must serve a campus that, while not strictly residential, will teach at least 85% of its FTES here. It must be flexible enough to accommodate the PCs and devices that students, faculty, and staff bring with them; it cannot erase users’ preferences and begin with its own tabula rasa. While not the web itself, it must have dashboards that users can navigate without mastering the intricacies of technology. And it must be economical while planners must anticipate how new waves of devices will entice users and possibly meet their needs.
IT has set up consultative governance to track and complete what we start. The campus is clarifying whether log jams in business processes result from misfires in technology or snafus in organization. For example, the SOLAR committee is dissecting business processes in order to repair arteries clogged by worn out bypasses and inefficient work habits. We are measuring when and how systems load up. That way, we can sequence tasks and segment kinds of users to minimize jams
Academic Affairs relies on IT for just-in-time technology help , ongoing support, networking, the provisioning of large utilities like email , the web portal, and management (enterprise) software. Because the web and the campus intranet are decentralized (as they are nearly everywhere), responsibility for maintenance and for updating information falls to departments and colleges. Academically, we envision a hybrid environment for learning, not one entirely on line. We already are prototyping courses that meet several times each week in classrooms and several times in virtual formats. This approach retains face-to-face relations; it also accommodates commuters and faculty who want to use virtual space for asynchronous exercises, variable pacing, and exploratory blogs. Hybrid models also allow us to compress more classes into existing space since each class reduces the frequency of its meetings. We work with IT to evaluate our users’ needs for learning management systems. And we work with CSU projects like MERLOT to amass a repository of learning objects that professors can recycle or adapt. At Northridge, we also are teaming with the Oviatt Library to catalogue digital materials for teaching . Otherwise, the distributed nature of the web will disperse information into chaos.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND EQUITY AND DIVERSITY?
Affirmative Action began in the Johnson administration’s interpretations of clauses in the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Executive orders in the Nixon years clarified the means to advance minorities and women whom, as classes, had been discriminated against in American society. No doubt, the slow pace with which schools and universities met the intent of Brown vs. Topeka aggravated many people. They did not want to wait several generations more for equality. Why wait eighteen more years for K-12 to prepare new generations of graduates to start the race together for college and beyond? Affirmative action would assist, now, current generations of minorities who were slowed in the race for success by poor education and social prejudice.
In 1979, the conflicted decision in Bakke vs. the University of California narrowed affirmative action. It was no longer a broad remedy for historical wrongs. Justice Powell recast it as a “plus factor” in individual cases. By 1996, the year of Proposition 209 in California, the opposition indicted “affirmative” as itself discriminatory. “Affirmative” leaped well beyond enforcement of equality, they argued. When Proposition 209 passed, affirmative hiring, special scholarships, and developmental funds for minority faculty, students, and staff ended. The academy was at odds with itself, as was American society. Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma endured.
Equity and diversity followed affirmative action. As a policy, it expanded to include age, physical and mental disabilities, veteran’s status, religious identification, etc. It now implies a responsibility to insure inclusiveness and fairness in recruitment, employment, and everyday interactions at a work site. The principal methods for hiring include reviewing national data about minorities prepared in advanced degree programs and/or employed in relevant work, casting wide nets for applicants, evaluating applicants without regard to origin or status, and writing ads broadly. Diversity, however, entails more than representation of ethnicities in hiring pools; it involves a state of mind. We must be sure that candidates are adept—not antagonistic, not indifferent—about negotiating difference in a multicultural society.
Proposition 209 prohibits the preferential advancement of candidates. However, it does not challenge the federal requirement, which evolved out of Executive Order 11246 (issued by President Johnson), that as a federal contractor, we gather information about the availability of minorities for positions in different disciplines. The courts have rules that such fact-gathering is not in itself preferential treatment; it is informative. With this knowledge, faculty and administrators can decide whether they need additional strategies to achieve representative pools of candidates. Increased inclusiveness in pools, in turn, should improve hiring ratios without imposing quota. Equity and diversity guidelines also specify the ethical obligations of peers and the liability of supervisors (and their institutions) for cleansing the workplace of harassment, hostile climate, and favoritism. A compatible workplace is a good in itself; it also is a key ingredient in retaining hires. Without a reputation for successful retention, a university will find it difficult to convince applicants that they are not entering a revolving door.
Equal treatment is ineffectual if it does not acknowledge that different cultures and individuals have dissimilar means for communication. At the same time dissimilar means must not become code for separate but equal. A similar paradox plays out in knowing whether the workforce is representative of the community, the profession, and the discipline. State and federal reports often require counts of diverse faculty. Indeed some accrediting groups and grantors have aggressive expectations about diversification. So it is a brave new world: census expectations without quotas and plus factors.
Despite the impediments and inconsistencies, we have progressed. Faculty direct federal grants that are exempt from state limits; the grants fund minority students’ preparation for graduate school. The Educational Equity Committee is working with departments to set up retention plans for all new faculty. CSU system data suggest our success in hiring and retaining.