The California State University Board of Trustees met Tuesday at its headquarters in Long Beach to discuss its budget plan for the 2013-14 school year.
According to Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for this fiscal year, the CSU will receive an increase in funding from the state’s General Fund by $125 million as a result of not increasing tuition fees this school year.
The budget also plans to replace the money the system refunded back to CSU students during last fall’s tuition rollback as initiated by Proposition 30.
In addition to discussing these budgetary items, the Board focused on an additional $10 million the CSU will be given to increase the amount of courses available to students through technological means, such as online courses.
The $10 million will also support an increase in counseling and advising services available for students as well as faculty compensation increases.
The Board’s most critical needs are to “move toward fair compensation levels for our employees and support … student success,” said Benjamin Quillian, executive vice chancellor and chief financial officer for the CSU.
At the meeting, Brown said he spoke with SJSU’s chancellor about three specific online courses currently being conducted at SJSU.
“So far, (it’s) very tentative, success is even greater than face to face on a very careful comparison,” Brown said.
According to discussion by the Board, by increasing the number of courses available to students, specifically “bottleneck” (high-demand) and online and hybrid courses, the CSU will be able to admit more students than in previous years.
“6,000 additional students will be admitted,” said Ephraim Smith, executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the CSU.
According to Smith, the students will be a mix of first-time freshmen and transfer students.
SJSU President Mohammad Qayoumi also discussed how students will benefit from the CSU’s redesigning and increasing of classes via technology.
“The key, the benefits that we get in terms of students are retention and graduation, and also improvement,” Qayoumi said. “Less students failing the course is the benefit that we see.”
The Board plans to further discuss how to decrease students’ time-to-degree rates and increase graduation rates at its next meeting in May.