Illustration by Michael Uribes
With the addition of $199 million of ongoing funding and another $106 million in one-time funding, the California State University is accepting spring students and as President John Welty confirms, more courses and faculty are also on the way.
Although the exact number of new professors to facilitate the extra courses could not be stated, Welty assured there would be more. About 400 courses are being added to the CSU, he said.
Welty also added during the early November interview that the additional funding will not be used for any salary increases or toward campus athletics.
In a previous article from The Collegian, William Covino, provost and vice President for Academic affairs confirmed the expansion of courses provided for the spring semester.
Fresno State is currently providing services to students with about 10 percent less faculty than previous years. Budget cuts to the CSU led to a series of class shortages, tuition fee increases, less professors and furlough days in previous semesters. The addition of new faculty will help to lessen the cut to services and classes.
“[We also expect] to expand library hours,” Covino said. The amount of extra hours the library will be open is still not known.
Some students are skeptical of the number of classes and services that are being planned.
“I hope [Fresno State] really does [what they say],” Allison Clark, business student at Fresno State said. “I know a lot of my friends had trouble getting into the classes they needed.”
Clark said she will take advantage of additional services provided by the university. “If they have more class time and offer more classes, that will help.”
Even though money will be provided for the CSU system, student fee tuition increases still persist.
A five percent increase to undergraduate and graduate tuition increase was recently passed by the CSU Committee on Finance and Board of Trustees. The fall 2011 fee increase of 10 percent will be implemented if legislation doesn’t buy out the increase.
“I completely understand that students are upset about fee increases and they have every right to be,” Executive Vice President of Associated Students, Inc. Selena Farnesi said. “Their education, which is supposed to be of public access at a public university, is getting more and more expensive.”
Farnesi said that ASI tried to negate the tuition increase.
“What we are doing now, now that it has been voted on, we are attempting to lobby the state to buy out the remaining part of the budget so that we don’t see another fee increase for the next semester.”