At Sonoma State, Faculty Decry Budget Cuts, Call for Regime Change

teachers with the California Faculty Association are demanding a regime change in higher education across the U.S. — last week they joined faculty from 21 other states — including the 23-campus network of California State Universities —  to fight what they called an attack on public education nationwide.

Dubbed the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, the movement seeks to give more power to teachers, students and communities instead of bureaucrats, politicians and administrators when it comes to the curriculum, tuition and fees and the overall structure of universities.

"[Sonoma State's] fees are already higher than other campuses, at the same time we've dozens faculty members while increasing the number of students," said Andy Merrifield, with the California Faculty Association who also teaches political science at Sonoma State. "The result is we have fewer sections available to our students, and students are finding that classes are much larger, they're paying much more and getting much less personalized attention from the faculty, which is absolutely fundamental for a quality education."

"So, the impact on the students in horrendous," Merrifield said.

But Sonoma State, like hundreds of schools and municipalities statewide, is in a holding pattern. Tuition, class sizes and possible teacher layoffs are hinged on the passage of  Gov. Jerry Brown's tax extensions.

"In his May revision of his January budget, the governor warned that if his proposed temporary tax extensions are rejected, the CSU would face ... $1 billion in cuts. That would be an unprecedented cut that will cause long-term damage to the campuses of the CSU and could mean a $16 million budget reduction for Sonoma State University" said President of Sonoma State University in a statement that he sent to the entire college. 

Brown and the legislature have already approved a $500 million cut to the CSU, including a $7 million cut to Sonoma State. 

"This is devastating for the campus," said Susan Kashack, a spokesperson for the university. "It means fewer, larger classes and possibly looking at not enrolling students in the spring semesters."

Arminana's statement read that CSUs across the state would hold applications for winter and spring until the fall, and consider an additional tuition fee increase of up to 32 percent. He said this could result in 20,000 less students statewide for 2012.

"Higher education is a public good, and therefor should be publicly paid for because everybody benefits, not just the students but the entire community," Merrifield said. "We need to get that message back to the American people — we used to know that, but we've lost track of it and instead we're moving towards corporatization, privatization and for-profit higher education that fail our students miserably."

The campaign is based on seven overarching principles including that higher education should be available and affordable to everyone, the curriculum might be broad and diverse, more investment in quality faculty, greater emphasis on technology, reduced cost-cutting, more public investment and steering clear from rigid testing to track student success.

While faculty and the administration may not agree on the way to solve the funding crisis, they do say that students should be put first — afterall, they’re the ones who bear the brunt of the cuts; they pay more money for classes that are increasingly harder to get into, sit in larger classes and have a harder time graduating.

Editor’s note: View the video to the right to hear what teachers have to say.