The emails and calls went out in September to faculty across San Francisco State University.
With apologies, department chairs informed lecturers that, come 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, while others will lose 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 there are fewer young adults in California to attend the state universities.
Since 2018, fall enrollment at San Francisco State has been declining
Enrollment
31,000
30,000
29,000
The highest enrollment
was 30,500 in fall 2012
Starting 2018, fall enrollment
started to decline year-on-year
28,000
27,000
26,000
Last year, fall enrollment reached 25,046,
the lowest in the past decade
25,000
2022
2018
2020
2012
2014
2016
Year
Since 2018, fall enrollment at
San Francisco State has
been declining
Enrollment
Starting 2018, fall enrollment
started to decline year-on-year
31,000
30,000
29,000
The highest enrollment
was 30,500 in fall 2012
28,000
27,000
Last year, fall enrollment
reached 25,046, the lowest
in the past decade
26,000
25,000
’12
’14
’18
’20
’22
’16
Year
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from San Francisco State University.
Since 2020, fall enrollment at CSU has been declining year-on-year
Enrollment
490,000
480,000
The highest enrollment
was 485,550 in fall 2020
470,000
460,000
450,000
Last year, enrollment
was 457,992.
440,000
430,000
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
Year
Since 2020, fall enrollment at CSU
has been declining year-on-year
Enrollment
490,000
480,000
The highest
enrollment
was 485,550
in fall 2020
470,000
460,000
Last year,
enrollment
was 457,992
450,000
440,000
430,000
’12
’14
’18
’20
’22
’16
Year
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from CSU.
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, said the cuts are outsized and dramatic.
“It’s very aggressive, and it’s out of scale,” said Brad Erickson, a full-time lecturer in 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 positions, 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’s 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.
After 2009, the number of part-time lecturers at CSU increases tremendously
Number
Lecturer
Professor
16,000
Admins
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
Year
After 2009, the number of part-time
lecturers at CSU increases
tremendously
Lecturer
Professor
Admins
Number
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
’04
’08
’12
’16
’20
Year
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from California Faculty Association Research and Data Center and CSU Management Personnel Plan Database.
Those lecturers have increasingly taught classes that would otherwise require hiring tenured faculty: The number of professors, in the same time period, grew just 7 percent. Student enrollment during those years grew 14 percent, to 476,357.
And administrator positions have grown especially quickly, 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 positions 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 toward supporting 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 members 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 workloads 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.”
Correction: A previous version of this story noted that San Francisco State had suffered a 16 percent drop in enrollment. The school is actually 16 percent below its target enrollment.
One has to wonder if the crime and politics of the city’s leaders over the past several years have contributed to the decline in stidebt enrollment. The same reasons for the decline in tourism and why businesses have left the city. Students and parents care about safety and the climate of the city of the school they will attend. Why else is enrollment dropping in this city and not others.
I suppose you could wonder all you want and fit anything into your stale narrative. The astronomical cost of living in San Francisco is a far likelier reason but that too is speculation.
Stale narrative? Tell that to all the businesses explicitly stating those are their reasons for closing.
Noticed that individuals cited were in liberal arts and social sciences.
What about Business, engineering, and sciences. These are areas where
students can get gainful employment, which, in reality, is why students
go on to higher education. Perhaps the effects of mortgaging their future
to borrow to get useless degrees is now the situation normal. Reforms
such as reinstatement of the traditional breadth requirement, as well
as review of the Social-Welfare-Bureaucratic Complex is in order.
As a mom to college-aged students, who works with high schoolers, and lives walking distance to SF State, I am so saddened to hear this news.
Something has got to give with the state of post-secondary education in our city, and also state and nation-wide.
And really, 400K, not including housing? That salary is pretty rich for a president who is clearly not making things work at this campus. They need their salary lowered, and then get set up with a bonus for student retention or graduation rates, something to determine success.
I worked for SFSU for 30 years and saw the most shameless and egregious administrative abuse. Most Directors and Managers were hired irrespective of their experience, managerial ability or education. Many didn’t have college degrees or previous managerial experience. In stead, most were hired because of a long established system of cronyism; and consequently, were incompetent but protected by a corrupt administration. The incompetent managers and directors depended upon their subordinates’ performance to compensate for their lack of experience and managerial skill.
The most outrageous example I saw was when, after the unabomber used SFSU as the return address on a package that killed someone in Sacramento, the then “Director” of “Campus Services” which included Central Receiving and the Mail room lied to the FBI at an assembly of workers and managers, telling them that there was a “hand held scanner” in Central Receiving. There was not. He had erroneously put a package scanning machine in the Mail Room. All the parcel post (large packages) came to Central Receiving and that is where the bomb would have gone if refused by the victim in Sacramento. When one of the staff of Central Receiving, after the meeting, called the Department of Public Safety (campus police department), he was reprimanded and told that it was “non of your business.” If it were anyone’s business it certainly was the staff member’s and the outrageous misconduct and criminality of the manager was ignored. This was, by no means, the only example of managerial misconduct that I saw or knew of. There were many. And as I understand it, the corrupt hiring practices continue. So, cutting the number of Administrators, Directors and Managers, after a thorough review of the credentials of all would have the least (if not positive) impact on the daily operations of the School.
How many administrators does it take to twist a light bulb? 🤔
This story showing the bloated administration’s salaries and number of jobs they take up is just another example of the CSU administration’s growing misallocation of public money. In 2018, the state auditor discovered that the chancellor’s office hid $1.5 billion and kept it in reserves. Today that number has grown to $8.5 billion in reserves, yet they claim there is a budget crisis of $1.5 billion. The CSU says can’t touch the money because it’s reserves, not operating budget, but each year amidst budget ‘crisises’ they keep squirreling money away. I would love Joe Rivano Barros and Mission Local to cover that story as well.
that seems to be a state agency pattern. remember when the state park service pulled off the same kind of scheme in the past? that was around 2008/9 when they wanted to close a whole score of state parks due to the “budget crises” and then someone discovered that the park service squirreled away something like $54 million while claiming they need $22 miliion to keep the parks open.
most CA state agencies and plenty of communal ones (like SF’s??) are so over bloated with non-productive staff, it actually surpasses the infamous bureaucracies of latin american countries..
Administration growth by 1/3? Effort to derail union activity? Grossly inflated salaries for admin? This is not a university, this is privatization of the state system and misallocation of our tax $. Hurting families. Taking away health care. Disrupting students lives in the heels of COVID. Poorly organized admin who don’t support faculty.
Having read through the comments, there are a lot of intelligent points,some of which should be investigated by Mission Local.
“The move is part of a cost-savings measure by a system facing a troubling trend: Fewer San Franciscans are having children, meaning there are fewer young adults in California to attend the state universities.”
A remarkable admission that is not credited to anyone in particular in the story. They’ll only have to wait less than another 10 years and the immigrant population will replace the kids that would have attended SFSU had their families not fled/been priced out. If the narrative that progressive policy makers are opening the flood gates of immigrants to garner votes (kind of true, I guess?) that plan will soon bite back as these immigrants come with a deeply ingrained culture of an historical understanding of what family and marriage consist of.
The charts don’t show enrollment relative to a baseline of zero which exaggerates the perception of increase/decrease. It’s misleading and rather hyperbolic.
Money is killing everything in the City …
More of the same: We see cuts to the people who do the essential work, bonuses to the executives, and billions spent on useless schemes like driverless cars.