Just a couple of weeks after the California State University Board of Trustees voted to increase student tuition, big cuts have been proposed at San Francisco State, particularly impacting their large lecturing faculty.
San Francisco State has an enrollment of nearly 30,000 students and employs upwards of a thousand lecturers. Ninety-four percent of that staff are part-time.
Brad Erickson is a full-time lecturer and the current president of SFSU’s branch of the California Faculty Association. He said the layoffs will impact both students and faculty.
“San Francisco State and the CSU’s serve the working families of California. When you disinvest in institutions that serve those families, that’s how intergenerational inequality get’s reproduced.”
The proposed cuts come amid strained contract negotiations between faculty and the school’s administration. Erickson had this to say, “We’re supposed to serving working families and we’re enriching executives as if we're some Fortune 500 company? It’s unconscionable.”
The faculty union has filed an unfair practice claim and told KALW that it plans to pursue further legal action on the matter. A university spokesperson did not respond to KALW for comment before air time.
