About this white paper

For Immediate Release

Contact: Lisa Cohen 310.395.2544; Brian Ferguson, 916.441.4848

 

NEW WHITE PAPER EXAMINES IMPLICATIONS OF ACADEMIC ‘RESTRUCTURING’ TAKING PLACE IN CSU SYSTEM

Budget cuts aren’t the only threat facing California’s institutions of higher learning. That is the conclusion of the new white paper entitled, “Restructuring” the CSU or Wrecking It?”

Authored by the California Faculty Association, this authoritative white paper seeks to address the growing issue of “restructuring” occurring throughout the CSU and UC systems and offers insight into the political agendas that may be driving the trend.

“On every one of our campuses, we are seeing signs that a profound change in the mission of our California State University is being implemented from the top under cover of the economic crisis,” said CFA President Lillian Taiz, a professor of History at CSU Los Angeles.

Spurred on by continual state funding cuts to the CSU over the past decade, many campus administrators now seek to change the very nature of the CSU through the elimination or “restructuring” of core academic subject areas (music, languages, physics, life sciences & multicultural studies for example) that have come to comprise higher education as we know it today.

“Every day, we encounter new evidence that the changes being made are not intended to help weather the economic crisis, but rather to make the CSU smaller, more elite, and structured to serve the strict needs of corporate interests rather than the broad interests of a participatory democracy,” said David Bradfield, a professor of Music and Digital Arts at CSU Dominguez Hills.

The “restructuring” process is already under way on a number of CSU campuses including Bakersfield, Dominguez Hills, Humboldt, Pomona, San Diego and Stanislaus. The process is different from campus to campus and has begun under a number of different labels including “program planning,” “restructuring” and “prioritization”

Whatever the process is being called, the goal of this white paper is to make it clear that there is a profound shift in public policy taking place concerning the CSU’s mission.