Cal State University Trustees Freeze Enrollment, Talk President Pay

The Cal State University Board of Trustees today will wrap up a two-day meeting focused on the $750 million in state funding cuts for 2011-12 the system is facing and another $200 million in possible cuts next year.

Monday’s meeting resulted in an enrollment freeze at several of the CSU campuses.

Today’s meeting was expected to include the consideration of higher compensation packages for new presidents at Cal State Fullerton and Cal State East Bay, a move that comes at a point when the idea of salary hikes during tough budget times has critics of the trustees upset. 

Cal State officials have said that pay needs to be competitive to draw qualified university leaders.

The proposal calls for Cal State Fullerton President Mildred Garcia to receive a base salary of $324,500 and East Bay President Leroy Morishita $303,660.  Both salaries would be 10 percent more than their current pay and 10 percent more than their predecessors.

On Monday, Cal State officials announced a plan to freeze spring enrollment next year at most campuses due to the budget cuts and wait list applicants the following fall pending what happens with the tax initiative Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed for the November ballot.

Cal Poly Pomona started restricting admission to the fall quarter several years ago, said Tim Lynch, a university spokesman.  The limit on applications reflects the high demand for admission at the campus, Lynch said.

“We had about nearly 30,000 applications last November from first-time freshmen for roughly 4,000 spots,” he said. “Our total FTE (full-time equivalent students) is 17,150, and we are consistently at that level in the fall.”

Cal State's campuses customarily receive roughly 70,000 applications in the spring. Under the plan now being considered, most of Cal State's 23 campuses will not accept new students. But eight campuses -- Fullerton, Los Angeles, Channel Islands, Chico, East Bay, San Francisco, San Bernardino and Sonoma -- will take a few hundred transferring from community colleges for the spring 2013 semester.

The alternative to cutting back on students would be to raise tuition again -- a step that has drawn bitter criticism in the past.

Cal Poly Pomona has lost $54.8 million in state funding in the past five years.  Should the governor’s tax plan fail to pass in November, that figure would increase to $64.2 million, he said.

“Tuition increases, which put an increasing burden on students, have not fully offset the loss of state funding,” he said.

The university’s operational budget is around 20 percent less than it was five years ago.  The campus has taken several measures to trim costs, including deferring million of dollars in maintenance, freezing salaries for three years for faculty and four for staff, instituting furloughs, and cutting class sections so that courses are not offered as frequently, he said.

--City News Service contributed to this report.