Academic Decline at Cal State Fresno?

By William Trombley
Academic quality is declining at California State University, Fresno, because of large classes, heavy faculty teaching loads, grade inflation and the admission of too many unprepared students, a 40-member faculty group said in a recently-published report.

The report, prepared by the Group for Quality Education, also suggests that many Fresno faculty members are not requiring enough writing from their students and are not giving rigorous examinations, that too many students require remedial work and that many students are working such long hours at off-campus jobs that they cannot concentrate on their studies.

The report has stirred some unrest among minority students and their supporters, who believe the document suggests that increasing minority enrollment has been an important cause of academic decline. White enrollment on the 17,500-student Fresno campus dropped 34.2 percent between 1990 and 1995, while Hispanic enrollment increased by 27 percent, Asian by 24.6 percent and African American by 24 percent.

Campus President John D. Welty and Academic Vice President Alex Gonzales believe the faculty group has raised some important issues but they do not share the group's belief that the quality of teaching and learning at Cal State Fresno has declined sharply.

"Some of the points they make are probably legitimate," Welty said in an interview. "Others are not."

The Group for Quality Education had its genesis a year ago, when several professors, most of them faculty veterans, decided to prepare a series of reports on quality issues they found troubling. Forty professors are listed as members of the group, another 14 as "interested but not members." The campus has 688 full-time and 292 part-time faculty members.

Ephraim K. Smith, who has taught history at Cal State Fresno since 1966, said the group acted because they did not believe the campus administration, the faculty Academic Senate and the faculty union "were paying enough attention to points that we thought were important."

In March the group released a compendium of reports, which made these points, among others:

• The Fresno campus has one of the highest percentages of "special admits"--students who are admitted even though they do not meet the usual requirements--in the 22-campus California State University system. "Special admits" accounted for 13 percent of all new students during the 1994Ð95 academic year and 28.4 percent of first-time freshmen.

• Fresno also has one of the highest percentages of students taking remedial classes, after faring poorly on the Cal State English and mathematics placement exams.

• Cal State Fresno students not only are carrying heavier classloads than in the past but also are working longer hours. According to campus officials, 44 percent of the students work more than 20 hours a week, 11 percent more than 40 hours. "They are literally running from class to job and back to class," the report said.

• There are too many large classes. The report said that in 1994Ð95, about half of all classes were large lectures, in which there was limited opportunity for student-faculty interaction

• Faculty members in many of these large lecture courses assign little or no writing, evaluating students entirely on the basis of mechanically-graded multiple-choice tests.

• Like almost all American colleges and universities, Cal State Fresno has experienced "grade inflation." In fall 1994, 54.5 percent of all grades given were A's or B's, while only 9.5 percent were D's or F's "The astoundingly high numbers of A and B grades would seem to indicate at first glance that our students are like the children of Lake Wobegone--well above average," the report stated.

• Too many Master's degrees are being awarded on the basis of examinations or "projects," without written theses.

Gonzales, the academic vice president, agreed with much in the report but said many of the problems have been caused by steadily eroding state financial support for the Cal State system.

"I think basically what you have are people longing to go back to the days of yore," he said. "But things will never be like that again. The students have changed and the budgets have been cut."

Gonzales also said some of the problems pointed out by the Group for Quality Education--grading practices, for example--are issues for the faculty, not the administration.

Melanie Bloom, professor of speech communications and Academic Senate chair, said the Senate has appointed a special Commission on Academic Excellence and the Quality of Life within the Academic Community, to consider the quality group's recommendations and other issues.