San Fran State University facing mass staffing cuts

Even college students are fleeing San Fran.  Or, not enrolling in the State College in this lawless city.

“The cuts will affect an unknown number of the 1,084 lecturers across the university. But an August presentation by the school’s budget committee said cuts could be equivalent to 125 full-time positions. 

The union said the cuts would affect several times more lecturers, since most are part-time. Some are losing a class or two, others their entire workloads, depending on the department.

The move is part of a cost-savings measure by a system facing a troubling trend: Fewer San Franciscans are having children, meaning fewer young adults in California to attend the state universities.” 

This has nothing to do with the birth rate in San Fran.  Students from anywhere in the State, nation or globe could enroll.  They refuse to because they are concerned about their lives more than a worthless diploma from an ultra-radical indoctrination center.

San Francisco State University facing mass staffing cuts

Hundreds of class sections could be cut as enrollment plummets

by JOE RIVANO BARROS, Mission Local,  9/29/23  https://missionlocal.org/2023/09/san-francisco-state-university-facing-mass-staffing-cuts/

The emails and calls went out in September to faculty across San Francisco State University. 

With apologies, department chairs informed lecturers that come next spring, they would see their classes cut back, sometimes entirely, according to the California Faculty Association, which represents some 29,000 professors and other staff across California State University campuses. 

“I was so disheartened when I got the email,” said Sheila Tully, an anthropology lecturer who has been at the university since 1996. Like the majority of the university’s instructors, Tully is a part-time lecturer who cobbles together enough classes to pay her bills — tough, when even a full-time lecturer makes a base of just $54,000, and 94 percent of lecturers are not full-time.

Tully said that she may retire rather than face the prospect of class cuts.

“Honestly, I’m done,” she said. “I just can’t live like this anymore.”

The cuts will affect an unknown number of the 1,084 lecturers across the university. But an August presentation by the school’s budget committee said cuts could be equivalent to 125 full-time positions. 

The union said the cuts would affect several times more lecturers, since most are part-time. Some are losing a class or two, others their entire workloads, depending on the department.

The move is part of a cost-savings measure by a system facing a troubling trend: Fewer San Franciscans are having children, meaning fewer young adults in California to attend the state universities. 

Kent Bravo, a spokesperson for San Francisco State, said the university had to deal with the reality of a shrinking student body: “We must rethink our operations to match current enrollment.”

The faculty union, however, says the cuts are outsized and dramatic. 

“It’s very aggressive and it’s out of scale,” said Brad Erickson, a full-time lecturer at the School of Liberal Studies and president of the union’s San Francisco State chapter. He criticized the university for saying the cuts represented a “glide path” towards financial sustainability and called the process “chaotic.”

“It’s not giving these faculty the chance to plan ahead and think, ‘What am I going to do for work?’ or ‘Will I have to leave the Bay Area?’”

Enrollment down, part-timers up 

San Francisco State is 16 percent below its target enrollment and faces a looming budget deficit of $9 million, according to the budget presentation. The presentation also outlined cuts of 23 full-time equivalent tenure-track faculty, and six full-time equivalent staff positions.

But lecturers, who make up some 60 percent of the university’s faculty, are facing the largest cuts by far, representing about a 30 percent decrease for most colleges within San Francisco State, according to the budget presentation.

Like the rest of the California State University system, San Francisco State has increasingly relied on part-time lecturers to staff classes.

It was convenient for the state to rely on part-time lecturers. “They can be hired or fired at will. It’s an early version of the gig economy,” said Erickson. 

Between 2006 and 2021, the number of part-time lecturers at state universities has grown by 38 percent to 16,857. 

Those lecturers have increasingly taken classes that would otherwise require hiring tenured faculty: Professors, in the same time period, grew just 7 percent. Student enrollment during those years grew 14 percent to 476,357.

And administrators have grown especially fast, doubling since 1993, according to an analysis by the faculty union. Between 2006 and 2018, the last year for which data was available, administrative staff increased by about a third.

That is a major issue for the faculty union, which has said that ballooning administrative and managerial positions — alongside handsome executive salaries — are diverting funds that could otherwise go towards students and faculty.

The California State University chancellor will take home $983,000 starting this year, including housing, car, and other allowances. Last year, the president of San Francisco State made $405,231 and was provided housing worth $60,000. Presidents at other campuses and executives make between $300,000 and $600,000 a year.

“I noticed a flier [on campus] about how many San Francisco State administrators make more than the governor of California,” said Tully, “and it was like five or six administrators. This is crazy.” 

Faculty union may file unfair labor charge

The downsizing also comes as the California Faculty Association has declared an “impasse” in its contract negotiations, bringing in outside mediators to resolve disputes between it and the university. 

Faculty are hoping for raises of 12 percent, which Erickson said would barely keep up with inflation since the last contract; management has agreed to 5 percent increases. 

And the union said it is considering filing an unfair labor practice charge around the cuts, saying that the layoffs discouraged faculty from union activity and might constitute labor violations.

“It has torpedoed our organizing campaign,” said Erickson. “We’ve had to work twice as hard to convince people who may not have a job that they should even fight for a fair contract.”

The impending cuts, according to Tully and Erickson, will affect all campus life: Classes will be canceled and professors will scramble to take over teaching from lecturers who are cut, they said.

And for those on the receiving end, the news is “devastating,” said Tully. “You already work for peanuts, and you do it because you love teaching and you love your students, and this is the thanks.”