BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Last semester, students and faculty at Cal State Bakersfield rallied for greater accountability and transparency in how the university handles its budget. Now, we're taking a closer look at what that means for the new school year.
Cal State Bakersfield says it was hit with a 3% cut in its general operating allocation for the new school year. The university says it had to reduce faculty — specifically, lecturers, not tenured professors.
Dr. Tracey Salisbury with the California Faculty Association has been at CSUB since 2017. She says there are challenges in getting faculty re-employed. Dr. Salisbury is the CFA Chapter President and Associate Professor of Black Studies in the Ethnic Studies Department, and she says, "We're going to hope that the work we're doing to get enrollment up, to get students graduated, and to show the importance and need of having a broader and more diverse faculty will continue to get people’s jobs back."
Both Dr. Salisbury and Kristen Watson, the Chief of Staff to the President, affirm that despite the faculty reductions, students are still on track to graduate as scheduled.
While there will be some adjustments to course offerings, students will still fulfill their graduation requirements."We ended up really rethinking what our instructional model would look like. On average, our class sizes had reduced down to a 1-to-18 ratio — so about 18 students in a class, which is a pretty low average. And so we said, what would it look like if we increased our class sizes to 25 students on average." Watson said.
Dr. Salisbury says students will need to adapt to larger classes and fewer course options. "There will be some challenges in terms of getting all the courses that they wish to get when they want them offered. There's going to be less variety of times and dates, but we're still going to be offering the same level of high-quality education."
Watson says there will be another budget forum planned for mid-September.
The first day of classes begins on August 25th. Students are encouraged to review their course schedules and meet with an advisor ahead of time.
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