Latest outrage(s) from CSU Chancellor demand action

LONG BEACH, Calif., USA - The chancellor of the California State University has made it clear for years that he doesn't have much respect for faculty and staff, or hold students in very high regard.

At least that what his actions - and most of the actions of the CSU Board of Trustees - lead any rational person to believe.

Charles Reed

In recent weeks, Chancellor Charles Reed proposed a labor contract that would in two years give him the opportunity to start pushing for (and probably getting) reductions in the salaries of faculty, if he thought it was a good idea. And he probably does think it is a good idea now, but knows he can't get away with it.

 Not yet.

This same chancellor battled hard to make sure the newest of his campus presidents (at San Diego State) would get an extra $100,000 per year bump on top of the salary his predecessor made. Apparently, there are campuses all over the nation (And the world! The world!) fiercely competiting for these presidents, whose  jobs, thanks to Charles Reed, gives them all the authority of a second tier manager of a Rite Aid pharmacy. A small Rite Aid pharmacy.

But today he managed to give yet another metaphorical digit to students, faculty and staff, when he convinced the CSU Trustees to approve a new policy which keeps potential campus presidents from  having to visit the campus over which they will lord, should he choose them to, well, lord.


It really does sound more and more like Rite Aid management, doesn't it?

According to the San Francisco Chronicle: "The trustees eliminated the visits after Chancellor Charles Reed said some potential candidates would refuse to be considered without a guarantee of privacy."

The link to the story is here: Presidents can remain anonymous - until they show up for 'work'

It seems pretty bizarre to select a person to be the big kahuna of a CSU campus - most of which have a history of democracy and openness - by bringing them in in the dead of night and springing them on the students, faculty and staff. And the tradition of having candidates for campus president showing up to meet with campus folks goes back to the 1960s. It seems to have worked pretty well for over 50 years.

The arrogance is appalling, but that word has seemed, well, insufficient in recent years to describe the tenure of Reed and most of the trustees, who seem to consider students and faculty and staff more annoying than anything.

There is no mechanism for recalling the trustees, nor for getting Reed out of his overly compensated position - $421,500 with a $30,000-per-year retirement bonus and a mansion in a tony section of Long Beach.

But perhaps students and faculty might start doing some picketing down south, wherever the chancellor happens to be roosting at the moment, just like faculty students are doing at Humboldt. Good for you Humboldt State - maybe Long Beach State can rustle up some signs and bullhorns to get the chancellor's attention.

Make it a loud bullhorn though, he seems quite tone deaf.

"Charlie Watch" at Humboldt State

California's public universities go to the deep pocket

SACRAMENTO, Calif. USA - That California's two major university systems have voted in recent weeks to raise student tuition for next year at all of their campuses should not be a surprise to the public or students or university faculty. Especially university faculty.

While both systems have been dealing with declining revenues from the state year after year, neither has made any secret that they would be looking to the students to keep the funds flowing, and budgets nicely topped off.

In the CSU, its trustees have adopted long term plans to raise fees - and also raise administrative salaries so as to be competitive. Those plans started back in the mid 1990s with former Chancellor Barry Munitz, who in 1997 went on to fame with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.


Barry Munitz

It might be more accurate to refer to Munitz's time with the Getty as infamous, as the link below explains.

What happened, Barry?

I won't bother to revisit all the baloney thrown out by both university systems about the need to hike administrative salaries so they systems can be competitive. I'm not sure even the CSU Trustees or the UC Regents really believe that hogwash.

But students ! Ah, the students are ideal onto which to push the burden. They are not organized politically. They have relatively short time at each institution. And for the most part they are busy doing what they went to college for - racking up units to get a degree.

And those few students who do decide to ask questions and get vocal either find themselves in hot water (politically) on their campuses - or get co-opted by their respective administrations. Watch most student government meetings and you get the eerie sense that the students have been coached - and not by a faculty member.

But non-university critics of the two systems, who routinely argue that the universities are profligate in their spending, miss one major point.

The systems do spend waaaaaay too much on administration. (And also love to create new administrative positions to fill with overpaid staff.) But as a percentage of their total budgets, it's not as startling as it might seem on the surface. Much more important is that the two systems are slowly killing their academic programs through starvation.

And the regents and trustees don't really care.

It much more fun to encourage the universities to divert funds to things like marketing and public relations (and maybe sports). Finding funds for more classes for students is infinitely less amusing.

The major objective of CSU Trustees - and UC Regents - would seem to be to ensure well-paid administrations and to be obnoxiously supportive of their campus presidents, chancellors and top staff.

"Students? Who are students?" they might ask, if ever pressed.

When CSU Sacramento faculty held a vote of no-confidence in the leadership abilities of CSU, Sacramento President Alexander Gonzalez several years ago (which was a landslide against him) the CSU Trustees went out of their way to ignore all the fiscal issues raised.


Alexander Gonzalez

But the trustees have continued to keep raising students fees at about 10 percent per year- and will continue to do so.

How else will they have the money to keep their 23-campus administrations happy?

Oops! I meant to say competitive.

CSU administrative greed makes life tough for novelists

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - A novelist writing a tome of fiction would be hard pressed to pen a more unbelievable story than the one that appeared in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

In the midst of a huge state budget meltdown (not to mention that little problem with the rest of the nation, Wall Street, the Big Three Automakers, et al), the California State University has been handing out pay raises to many of its top administrators like party favors - and adding more administrators, too.

At the center of this is one very familiar character, Chancellor Charles Reed, who has never met an administrator he didn't want to hire - or pay more.


A smiling Reed - and why not?

Here is a link to the full story:

Let Them Eat Cake

The pay raises themselves are not that big of a surprise for people who have the gastrointestinal fortitude to follow the mishaps (and greed) of this university system.

The corruption in the CSU has been evident for years, though the arrogance seems to be growing faster than the national debt. When the faculty at the CSU, Sacramento campus held a vote of no-confidence in campus President Alexander Gonzalez two years ago, the CSU Board of Trustees yawned, despite clear evidence the president took money from the academic budget for public relations.

Only weeks ago, the same smiling the CSU chancellor voluntarily gave $31 million back to the state without a whimper while simultaneously telling faculty that contracted pay raises were not coming.

Reed gives up the cash

Ironically, a group formed last year to fight budget cuts - the Alliance for the CSU - is sponsoring a massive rally on CSU, Sacramento campus today to collect sad stories about how the lack of funds is going to impact the quality of education.

Too bad Chancellor Charles Reed and the rest of the Board of Trustees are so hard of hearing.

Education - and the CSU - are bullseye in budget wars

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The budgets of all the segments of public education are squarely in the sights of the state government finance people as the state of California attempts to grapple with a state budget that is badly out of balance and getting more so by the day.

Among the many time bombs ticking are the ever-lowering estimates of what homes are worth (which translates into lower taxes - if tax assessors do their jobs) and the race-to-the-bottom spiral of sales tax revenues as state residents hunker down, spend less and thus cut the tax revenues that have already been counted by the state - but not collected.

In the California State University, there is the additional problem of a university chancellor who is all-too-willing to rollover on his own 23-campuses to curry favor with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.


CSU Chancellor Charles Reed

Reed this week agreed voluntarily to give up $31.3 million dollars when the governor asked for various state-funded agencies to chip in to put sandbags in front of the budget-deficit flood.

That seems so reasonable, until you consider that the CSU has already taken a $288 million reduction this year. Originally, the governor said the CSU would have to reduce its budget by $386 million, later relenting and restoring the difference.

And now the governor has gone after a portion of that restoration money, with the likelihood he will come back and ask for more of what he "restored."


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)

The California Faculty Association - the labor union representing the faculty - is furious that Reed simply agreed to give up the money, indicating in a letter to the governor that cutting the additional $31 million (about $1.3 million per campus) will not hurt the instructional program.

That's bad enough - and arguably untrue - but the union is doubly furious because last year, when budget cuts were looming, the CFA, students, Reed and the CSU Board of Trustees all linked arms and sang a political kumbaya, forming the Alliance for the CSU to show the governor and legislators a united front, spending huge sums of money on public relations in the process, though they didn't gain any real traction with Schwarzenegger, apparently.

Part of that united front meant that the CFA would keep its criticism muted of administrative goings on, including earlier this year when the chancellor got called out for handing out a no-bid contract for more than $2.45 million several years back - a contract that he engaged in specifically to fight the union over its demands for higher wages for faculty.

In early October the university system and Reed got slapped with a $7.7 million lawsuit by the whistleblower in that case (fired by Reed in March) who had publicly raised questions about the propriety of the $4,000-per -day, no-bid contract with C. Richard Barnes & Associates, LLC, of Lawrenceville, Ga. for consulting services.

Whistleblower story

If anyone was surprised by the chancellor's actions this week, they haven't been paying attention.

Practically since the day he took over his job from outgoing Chancellor Barry Munitz (who annoited Reed and convinced the board of trustees to select Reed without a competitive search), Reed has kowtowed to the administrative branch of government while generally thumbing his nose at the legislature.

That thumbing this week has now grown to include the faculty and students who set aside their many earlier differences with Reed to form the "alliance."

And it was only a few years ago that Reed required nearly all the campuses of the CSU to install and operate a complicated computer system called the Common Management System, a software and hardware package that promised miracles but mostly delivered nightmares: cost overruns, technical glitches and conflicts of interest in the bidding process. It even got blistered - along with Reed and many of his staff - in a state audit and was the subject of legislative hearings.

The software in the system remains such a mess, that most campuses refer to it as a full-employment-for-consultants scheme.

The other portions of the Alliance for the CSU - the faculty and students - are regrouping, trying to see they can get back the $31.3 million that Reed turned over without a fuss.

But to do that, they need Reed to agree and tell governor that he has changed his mind and won't turn over the money so easily.

They might as well start singing kumbaya right now and put their energies into figuring out what to do when Reed says (sometime soon) that the CSU can turn over the rest of the 'restored' money without hurting the education of the university students.