For most of the last thirteen years, the instructional heart of this university has been subjected to a process of cannibalization. This process has led to a decline in educational quality, diminished access to instructors by students, and a reduced level of effectiveness in attaining this university's core mission, the education of students.
The practice of cannibalizing instruction is graphically illustrated by the imbalance of the numbers of full-time equivalent students (FTES; one FTES constituted by fifteen units of registered coursework), and full-time equivalent faculty (FTEF; one FTEF constituted by fifteen units of instruction). An increase of FTES over FTEF results in a higher student-faculty ratio (SFR).
With respect to the university's budget from the State of California, an expansion of FTES and a contraction of FTEF permit budgetary resources, from the General Fund, or state budget, to be diverted from direct instruction to other purposes. An increase in student faculty ratio (SFR) reflects this process.
This point can be better grasped by recognizing that the university receives from the state general fund approximately $7500 for each FTES.
Accordingly, an increase of 100 FTES provides about three quarters of a million dollars in general fund monies to the university. If no added faculty accompany this increase in FTES , then the three quarters of a million dollars becomes available for matters other than direct instruction. SSU's SFR has been perennially higher than that of the CSU for every year but one since the 1992-1993 academic year. That gap has become particularly dramatic in recent years.
As revealed by data provided by the CSU Chancellor's office and presented in the Orlick Report, available on the website of the SSU Academic Senate, between 2001 and 2004, full-time equivalent students at Sonoma State increased by 366.8 FTES. At about $7500 per FTES, this brought to SSU an increased budget of about $2,750,000. During the same period, the number of full-time equivalent faculty decreased by 31.8 FTEF. If we ignore the circumstance that many of these faculty were full professors who were not replaced upon retirement, and simply assume that this reduction was entirely absorbed by a reduction of lecturers (at an estimate of about $45,000 in salary savings per instructor), then as an underestimate we conclude that the university achieved an added savings of $1,435,000 from a reduction in faculty. Together, these two changes --- and the increased SFR that necessarily results from such a process --- provide in excess of $4,000,000 each year to the university to be used for purposes other than the direct instruction of its students.
In brief, then, student access to instructor diminished, quality of education declined, and faculty workload increased. These injuries to the
SSU students' educational process is alarming in the extreme.
However, as noted above, this process has not been limited to the last four years, but has characterized most of the last thirteen years.
Equally alarming, the most recent data from the California State
University's Chancellor's office placed SSU as having the highest student faculty ratio of all of but one of the twenty-three CSU campuses; SSU was barely exceeded only by one campus, CSU Monterey Bay. This state of affairs is most remarkable for a campus that markets itself as providing students greater access to faculty
At the Academic Senate and in his opinion piece published recently in the
STAR, "program review policy: the Provost's Perspective (STAR, 11/16/05, p.
2), the Provost stated that he wishes to fund program review and assessment almost entirely out of the budgets of the schools and the academic departments. Less than 29% of the budget of SSU is devoted to direct instruction, as measured by the proportion of the budget allocated to faculty salaries. With his proposed process of funding program review principally from contributions drawn from deans and department chairs, an even greater diversion of funds from direct instruction, with its consequent decrease in student access to instructor, decline in educational quality, even more elevated SFRs and increased faculty workloads is the inevitable outcome.
In brief, this is a process and practice of cannibalizing instruction. By feeding on itself, the instructional component continues to decline, with corresponding consequences for student education and university mission attainment.
I suggest that the theory underlying this process of instructional
cannibalization is tied to the administrative view of this university as like a business, one in which quantitative measures of productivity, the ratio of graduates as outputs to matriculated students as inputs, is the criterion of institutional effectiveness, and reduction of budgetary resources devoted to that productivity (the throughput process) is the principal criterion of institutional efficiency.
In other words, from a business perspective, organizational efficiency is increased when more students are "educated" by fewer faculty. From this narrow theoretical stance, the cannibalization of instruction seems to make good business sense.
With respect to the Academic Senate resolution on program review of
10/13/05, I urge the Senate to sustain it. The cannibalization of instruction is furthered by a bad theory of organizational structure and dynamics, and promoted by a bad set of practices. Together, these serve to hinder effective attainment of this university's primary mission: the provision of a quality education to its students. If a policy contrary to
Academic Senate's resolution of 10/13/05 is to be imposed on this university, the faculty should not collaborate with nor ratify such an imposition.
[Note: That resolution reads as follows: "RESOLVED: The Academic Senate of Sonoma State University strongly encourages the Administration to plan for additional resources to allocate to faculty specifically for Program
Be the first to comment on this article!