Fewer professors, more managers work on Cal State campuses

As enrollment at California State University soared over the last decade, the number of professors did not soar with them. But managers and supervisors increased aplenty, according to numbers compiled by faculty who are angry about the shift.

Enrollment rose by 24 percent between 2004 and 2014, while tenured and tenure-track faculty dropped by 3 percent, and managers and supervisors rose by 19 percent, the California Faculty Association reported Tuesday.

The faculty association represents about 25,000 faculty members across CSU’s 23 campuses, and much of its report—“Race to the Bottom — Salary, Staffing Priorities and the CSU’s 1%” — looks at salary information the group hopes will help in labor negotiations with the university in May.

But for students and taxpayers, the numbers paint a revealing portrait of who is teaching the more than 400,000 students at the vast university and its campuses, how the ratio of professors to administrators has changed, and what CSU and its campuses looked like before and after the recession.

CSU lost a third of its budget during the mid- to late 2000s and shed thousands of employees, the university reports.

But it also added the equivalent of 600 full-time managers and supervisors —from 3,127 to 3,726 — between 2004 and 2014 for a 19 percent increase, according to the faculty research.

Before the downturn, in 2004, 64 percent of CSU instructors were tenured professors or were on track to becoming tenured. Such faculty hold office hours for students, perform research and can help run departments. A decade later in 2014, 55 percent of CSU instructors were tenured or on the tenure track.

The actual number of professors lost isn’t clear because the faculty researchers rely on “full-time equivalent” employees, not head count. But overall, the equivalent of 300 full-time professors was lost.

“One of the more ominous findings for the CSU in our paper is that there is no 'next generation’ of permanent faculty in the pipeline,” said Lillian Taiz, a history professor at Cal State Los Angeles and president of the California Faculty Association.

It’s not that the students were left with no one to teach their classes. In fact, enrollment grew during this time by the equivalent of more than 75,000 full-time students, from about 317,000 to nearly 393,000.

But now they were being taught by more part-time lecturers: instructors without tenure who might be experts in their field but who earn lower salaries, work on year-to-year contracts and have no offices on campus or duties other than teaching. Before the downturn, 35 percent of CSU faculty were part-time lecturers. By last year, it had grown to 45 percent.

For the university, there were clear benefits to this shift.

Lecturers generally teach more classes than professors do, sometimes five in a day. But they can also be hired quickly to teach just one class, if that’s what’s needed.

“During the recession years it provided us with flexibility,” said Laurie Weidner, CSU’s spokeswoman. “It takes about a year to hire (tenure-track) faculty. It’s a long-term financial commitment. Lecturers provide more flexibility, and we needed that.”

For lecturers, however, the lack of permanency — which often requires them to drive from campus to campus in search of classes to teach, earning them the nickname “freeway flyers” — is a major problem.

Leslie Bryan, a theater lecturer at CSU San Bernardino who works with the California Faculty Association, said the faculty shift is bad not only for employees but also for the university.

“In essence, this is turning teaching in the CSU into the equivalent of a fast-food job because of the fast-food style of hiring,” she said, noting that lecturers are considered “expendable” and “good enough to get the job done and (get) out of the way.”

Weidner, CSU’s spokeswoman, said students do best in an environment with both professors and lecturers. Yet the university wants to hire more tenure-track faculty because “their academic scholarship is vital in nurturing students, advancing the quality of our degree programs and preparing the next generation of academic leaders.”

In its budget request to the state, CSU has asked for $11 million to hire more professors, Weidner said. CSU also hired 740 new full- and part-time tenure-track faculty this year and is searching for additional full-time tenure-track positions. It isn’t clear what the net increase might be, however, after faculty departures and retirements are considered.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail nasimov@sfchronicle.com