CSUN University News Clippings

CSUF faces $29 million cut in budget showdown

(June 2, 2009)

by Gary Robbins

UC Irvine isn’t the only local campus expected to suffer a big hit in helping the state balance its budget. Cal State Fullerton will have to cut $29 million — we think. The campus didn’t respond to a written request for an estimate on how much it will have to trim. So we put the same question to an official at Cal State University headquarters in Long Beach.

Claudia Keith, a CSU spokeswoman, said in an email: “While we don’t have an exact figure yet for campus budget targets, what I can tell you is that Fullerton’s budget is about 6% of the CSU total operating budget and Long Beach is about 7% …

“So, if the budget deficit we are looking at today overall is somewhere (in) the range of $481 million, then you can guess-estimate the campus reductions if all of the campuses were reduced proportionately to balance our budget. That would probably be in the ballpark.”

We take that to mean that CSUF would have to cut about $29 million (6 percent of $481 million) and that CSULB — which draws about one-third of ifts students from Orange County — would have to cut about $33.7 million.

The potential impact of state budget cuts on higher education was the subject of a legislative committee meeting on Monday. The Associated Press reports that, “The California State University’s chancellor, Charles Reed, said the cuts proposed for his 23-campus system were the equivalent of cutting its enrollment by 60,000.”

Publication: Orange County Register