Response to President Armstrong
In response to President Armstrong’s remarks about SQE’s May Day Action:
President Armstrong and many other administrators have played a pivotal role in raising our campus-based fees by 62% since 2010. SQE agrees with President Armstrong that the State has not provided adequate funding to the CSU. And one can argue that President Armstrong was forced to raise tuition in the face of budget cuts. However, he could be doing so much more to win back State funding lost during the recession. Our institution’s leaders have lost sight of the core tenets so central to the CSU’s success—that is: quality education, a tuition-free (or close to that) operating model, and to maintain accessibility. Our President openly rejects the idea that California could EVER return the CSU to its former mission. In fact, he believes our goals are not situated within reality. We want to counter that notion, and offer a transformative perspective on what California Higher Education could look like—and, what SQE sees as California Higher Education’s future.
Our administrators claim to value public higher education, and maybe they do. But their version of valuing the CSU is to hand the system over to the market, and let the private sector take over. This is not our vision for the CSU. President Armstrong also seems to have overlooked the fact that 40% of Cal Poly students voted NOT to raise fees—and if we have learned anything from the past year at Cal Poly, it’s that the opinions of the other 40% matter just as much—especially in regards to decisions that affect people differently based on their family’s income level.
Instead, as laid out in the Sustainable Financial Model and the Cal Poly Master Plan, President Armstrong is complacent and active in the CSU's and Cal Poly's transformation into profit-seeking institutions, who rely on private partnerships to fund our programs. As we increasingly rely on private sponsorships and partnerships, the market dictates the ways in which funding is allocated.
At Cal Poly specifically, we see a vastly disproportionate amount of private monies given to Engineering and Agricultural programs. Over 60 percent of Cal Poly’s financing now comes from private donors. We understand that Cal Poly has historically been a polytechnic and agriculturally focused institution, but the 21st century has launched Cal Poly into a position where there are comparable numbers of Art and Science students to Engineering and Agricultural students. Put simply, Art and Science programs deserve more funding than they have been given in recent years. This bias against Arts and Science, however, remains because of the way grant money is distributed through the CSU.
The results of this are increased student tuition due to a lack of private sponsorship and a complacent and neutral stance with regard to pursuing state funding--which in turn reifies the Legislature's stinginess towards public higher education in California. For example, in the Sustainable Financial Model market based tuition is proposed; which, could up to double fees and would disproportionately and unnecessarily affect undocumented students living in California and not recognized under AB540.
In addition, we see the continual, systemic, and habitual defunding of Liberal Arts programs. This isn't to say that the University is defunding those programs per se--but that in the face of rising costs to maintain faculty, the maintenance of infrastructure, and loss of purchasing power, these programs lack the adequate resources they need to develop, maintain themselves, and advance without increases to their budgets, operating costs, and hiring allowances.
Private sponsorship hands power over to the private sector; which oftentimes has its own agenda that may not be in line with what Cal Poly, as a public higher education institution, ought to be pursuing. Instead of public accountability and oversight, there would instead be the possibility of corrupted research and curriculum, favoritism in allocation of resources, and controversial or even damaging academic agendas.
Regardless, the Sustainable Financial Model sets the precedent that the CSU does not need support from the State Legislature.
In his closing paragraph, President Armstrong asked Students for Quality Education to “support the rights of others to review all the facts and make a decision based on a holistic view.” We do support this philosophy; here are a few facts (from the Chancellor’s and Cal Poly’s own data) we ask students and supporters to consider:
From 2010 to 2015,
The number of students at Cal Poly increased 14%
Total student fees increased 45%
Cal Poly campus based fees increased 62%
The net number of faculty increased 16% BUT read the next line!
The number of professors decreased 2%; temporary (mostly part-time) lecturers increased 41%.
The number of administrators increased 51%.
The total spent on administrators per year increased 55%.
Fees have been increasing at a breakneck pace ever since 2000, far exceeding the rise in inflation; now is not the time to further increase tuition.
We need CSU leadership that proposes solutions to a systemic defunding of public higher education. We need CSU leadership to pursue statewide initiatives like prop 30 to gain new funding sources for the CSU. We need leadership that values the core tenets of the CSU, who will fight for their realization in 21st century California.
