By William Trombley
Senior Editor
Several months ago Chancellor Barry Munitz of the California State University showed his Board of Trustees a video in which Richard I. Mahoney, chief executive officer of the Monsanto Chemical Co., urged college and university presidents to apply today's "lean and mean" corporate business practices to higher education.
In the video, Mahoney told of having a "nightmare" in which his company was forced to compete with aggressive rivals, handicapped by the fact that many of his employees had "guaranteed lifetime employment." But the nightmare ended when Mahoney learned that he could raise Monsanto prices by twice the rate of inflation without losing any business.
This, Mahoney suggested, is the current state of American higher education--saddled by high-priced professors who have lifetime tenure, stuck with outmoded teaching practices, unwilling to be swept up in the "reinventing" and "restructuring" fervor, yet able to stay in business by charging ever-higher tuitions and other fees.
Munitz, who was a corporate officer himself before becoming chancellor of the 22-campus Cal State system in 1991, said he showed the Mahoney video because "I was trying to show people what we hear when we go off to talk to corporate and political leaders--they don't believe we're willing to change"
Trustees loved the presentation, and most of the campus presidents seemed to like it, too. However, Alistair McCrone, the veteran president of Humboldt State University, had reservations. "While embracing the new technologies and so on, we might start by looking at what we do so well--the teaching of ethics, culture, humanities," he said later. "The presentation didn't deal with those things."
Some faculty leaders were appalled by the Mahoney video.
"It was like waving a red flag in front of the faculty," said Terry Jones, professor of sociology at Cal State Hayward and president of the 7,400-member California Faculty Association, the faculty union. "It makes you wonder what the intentions of your employer are."
Although many faculty members may not like them, the intentions of Chancellor Munitz and the Board of Trustees seem clear--to decentralize the vast Cal State system, granting as much autonomy as possible to individual campuses, while at the same time building a lean, efficient operation at the Long Beach headquarters, and running an aggressive public relations campaign to persuade elected officials, the news media and the general public that all is well.
An air of corporate smoothness has settled over the bimonthly meetings of the 24-member Board of Trustees, replacing the somewhat fuddy-duddy atmosphere of the past.
Staff presentations frequently are accompanied by slick visuals. Documents are short, stressing "main points" in large, bold type. These are busy men and women, the tone suggests, who must be allowed to return as soon as possible to their important positions.
And the trustees are busy people. They run banks and businesses or they have professional practices. They have little time to master the myriad details of a sprawling higher education empire--the largest system of its kind in the country--that stretches from far northern California almost to the Mexican border. Some have not even visited all the campuses. So they put their faith in Munitz, often referring to him as the "chief executive officer" who oversees the many campus "branches" from his corporate "headquarters" in Long Beach.
There are no factions within today's Board of Trustees. The rancorous exchanges that frequently mark deliberations of the University of California Board of Regents these days are not heard at the trustees' table. Munitz works hard to make this so, trying to reach consensus among board members in advance of the meetings so that disputes do not take place in public.
"What we have here is a trustee group that is well managed by the chancellor," Terry Jones said. "Nothing unexpected happens at those meetings."
Cal State people often refer to their system as the "peoples' university" because admissions requirements are less stringent than the University of California's and the system is more racially diverse than UC. Also, Cal State students tend to be older (the average age is 27), and more of them come from lower-income backgrounds, working part-time jobs to pay college bills, than is generally true at UC.
However, the Board of Trustees reflects neither the students nor "the people." Of the 21 current board members (there are three vacant seats), 16 are appointed by the governor, and nine of these are white males in their middle years or beyond. Until recently, there were three women--Martha Fallgatter of Bakersfield, and Marian Bagdasarian of Fresno, both white, and Joan Otomo-Corgel, a Manhattan Beach periodontist, who is Japanese-American. However, Bagdasarian's term expired and she was replaced by Ali C. Raza, an Iranian-born real estate and investment executive from Newport Beach.
California's Latino population is estimated to be almost 30 percent by the state Department of Finance, but only two trustees--Ronald Cedillos of Huntington Beach, and Ralph Pasqueira of San Diego--have Latino backgrounds, and Cedillos rarely attends board meetings. The state's estimated seven percent African-American population is represented by only one trustee--Michael Stennis, who owns the Golden Bird fried chicken restaurants in Los Angeles.
All 16 have been appointed by Republican governors--either Pete Wilson or his predecessor, George Deukmejian. Except for Stennis and William Hauck, all are believed to be registered Republicans, and Hauck is a personal friend and strong supporter of Wilson's.
Many able people have served as trustees since the system was formed in 1961 but few have come from California's powerful families as members of the UC Board of Regents have in the past and, occasionally, still do. "They tend to be the people who gave only half as much money" to gubernatorial campaigns, said Alex Sherriffs, who was Governor Ronald Reagan's education advisor and later served as a Cal State vice chancellor.
The trustees are less stuffy than the regents. At meetings they address each other by first name--"Ted" or "Ralph" or "Martha," not as "Regent so-and-so." They do not disappear as often into closed-door "executive sessions."
Board members are paid a $100 daily stipend for attending meetings, plus $116 a day for expenses. There are few fancy dinners like those that typically accompany regents' meetings. The trustees even pay for their lunches on meeting days.
People who attend the meetings are not frisked at the door, as they are when seeking admission to regents' meetings. Police are less in evidence.
Last July, when the Board of Regents voted to abandon UC affirmative action policies, a small army of campus, city and state policemen gathered at the San Francisco meeting place. Six months later, when the Cal State Board of Trustees faced potential protests over a controversial remedial education proposal, fewer than a dozen police were on hand. And Chancellor Munitz arranged to have coffee and doughnuts served to the protestors.
For some time now, the Cal State system and its trustees have benefited from simply not being the University of California or the Regents.
A succession of debacles--beginning with the overly-generous retirement package that was handed to former UC President David Gardner in 1992 and continuing to recent revelations that UC has been doing admissions favors for rich and powerful people--has damaged UC's reputation and has caused legislators, the news media and others to think better of Cal State.
"When I wake up each morning, I thank God for the University of California," a top Cal State official said.
But Munitz warned that such favorable comparisons will not last.
"One thing I know is that things will turn," the chancellor said in a recent interview. "I don't know when, or what the issue will be, but I know it will happen."
In the meantime, the Cal State system and its governing board have plenty of problems of their own.
The California recession and resulting budget cuts of the early 1990s cut into Cal State support, both for current operations and for capital expenditures. Many full-time faculty members took early retirement and hundreds of part-time faculty members were dismissed. This resulted in heavier teaching loads for the professors who remained, and larger classes for students. Faculty salaries were stagnant.
Enrollment fell by more than 50,000 between 1990Ð91 and 1994Ð95, largely due to a planned "downsizing" but also because fees increased sharply and because some students could not get the classes they needed. The systemwide work force dropped from 40,800 to about 36,000.
While trustees and others have praised Munitz for skillfully handling the budget crisis, critics contend that the policy of deliberate enrollment reductions denied thousands of students access to Cal State.
Enrollment downsizing aroused so much opposition in the Legislature, especially when the Democrats still controlled both houses, that Munitz and the trustees had to reverse field and urge the campuses to enroll more students. Some, like Cal State Fullerton and San Jose State, had trouble doing so. Nor did the Legislature accept a Board of Trustees proposal that student fees should pay for one-third of educational costs. (They now cover about 22 percent).
This year's news is somewhat better. Systemwide enrollment is up about 6,000, fees have been frozen, and Governor Wilson's proposed 1996Ð97 budget, the one now being debated in the Legislature, is the best Cal State has seen in several years. But it would take many years of generous budgets to repair the damage of the early '90s and also to accommodate the 70,000 additional students who are expected to enroll over the next decade.
Neither Munitz nor key members of the Board of Trustees think such support is likely in a state that now spends as much on its correctional system as on higher education, and where higher taxes are anathema.
"I don't see the Legislature looking on this as a high-priority problem at this point in time," said Trustee James H. Gray, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Harbor Bank in Long Beach. "More likely, they're going to say, 'take all the students, don't raise the fees and don't do anything about the deferred maintenance problems.'"
According to Gray and others, $325 million is needed to repair existing buildings and to replace outmoded equipment on the 22 campuses.
"If we have a real crisis in California higher education, it's on the capital side," Chancellor Munitz said. "Deferred maintenance, seismic safety, replacements, infrastructure so we can take advantage of the new technology--there's very little money for any of that. But it doesn't get talked about because it's not interesting, it's not sexy, and that's unfair to students and faculty, unfair to everybody."
The board must decide how to cope with college students who come from very different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and whose educational experiences vary widely. How much remedial education should Cal State campuses offer? How many students should be enrolled who are "special admits"--exceptions to the usual grade and test score requirements?
As the board members contemplate these and other problems, they must yearn for the days when the system was new, money was plentiful and public higher education was held in higher esteem than it seems to be today.
The California State University--then called the California State College System--and its governing Board of Trustees were creations of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, much of which was enacted into law in 1960.
The institutions, most of them former teachers' colleges, were to concentrate on undergraduate education and master's degrees while research and advanced graduate study were to be the domain of the University of California. The colleges would accept students from the top one-third of the state's high school graduates, UC from the top one-eighth.
Ten of the original trustees came from the State Board of Education, which had loosely administered the colleges before the Master Plan legislation, while six were appointees of Governor Pat Brown. Four, like Brown, were Democrats, one was an independent and one, Ted Meriam of Chico, was a Republican.
Meriam, now 86, recalled the board's early days during an interview on the Cal State Chico campus.
"Our first meeting was in Brown's office and he told us what he expected, which was solid concentration on the problems of the state colleges, without any reference to political parties," Meriam said. "He wanted us to devote our attention to the problems of growth and putting together the new system.
"I've always given Governor Brown very high marks for his hands-off attitude," he continued. "He was supportive but he never interfered. I'm sorry to say that hasn't been true of the governors that followed. It has become a very political process."
One of the board's early tasks was to rein in some of the powerful campus presidents.
"Some of the larger and stronger colleges (such as San Francisco State, San Diego State and San Jose State) were sort of like duchies, accustomed to making their own arrangements in Sacramento" said Louis Heilbron, the board's first chairman, who is still active in his San Francisco law firm at the age of 83. "They didn't particularly want to be part of a system. So we had to deal with that and, at the same time, take care of the smaller, weaker institutions."
Cal Poly President Julian McPhee, one of the most powerful campus leaders, reportedly told visitors, "I don't need a board, I have the Legislature." When the trustees insisted that each campus submit an academic plan before additional new buildings would be approved, the president at San Jose State sent back the entire college catalog, announcing, "this is our academic plan."
But gradually, the trustees gained the support, or at least the acquiescence, of these strong-willed campus presidents, and the California State College System began to take shape.
New admissions standards were set. A few of the weaker campus presidents were persuaded to resign. A statewide Academic Senate was established so that the voice of the faculty would be heard in systemwide deliberations. The designing of new campus buildings, which had been the exclusive preserve of the State Architect, was opened to private architects, in the hope that campuses no longer would resemble state prisons.
The sometimes tricky conversion from teachers' college to liberal arts college was well underway at some institutions but was just starting at others. Higher academic standards, promoted by then-Chancellor Glenn S. Dumke and backed by the Board of Trustees, helped that process along.
Enrollments were growing rapidly, from 95,000 in 1960, when the Master Plan became law, to 262,000, on 19 campuses and several off-campus centers, in 1971. New faculty members were hired by the carload.
"We were in a period of frantic growth," said Ellis McCune, who was president at Cal State Hayward from 1967 to 1990 and later served as interim chancellor for the system. McCune, a political scientist, recalled that he was one of 75 new professors who were hired at Cal State Northridge (then known as San Fernando Valley State College) in a single year, 1959.
The trustees' first choice for chancellor, Buell Gallagher, who had been president of City College of New York, lasted only eight months. Attacked by conservatives as "soft" on communism, and urged by a wife who was unhappy in California, Gallagher returned to his old job at CCNY.
The trustees turned to Dumke, who had been Gallagher's vice chancellor for academic affairs and, before that, president of San Francisco State. Dumke was an historian who had published three books on the American West before becoming an administrator. He was also a Republican and a conservative (although today he would be considered a moderate).
Said Heilbron, "You had the interesting situation of a board made up almost entirely of Democrats hiring a Republican chancellor, with assurances of independence that, I believe, were kept for 20 years."
Dumke looked like he had been sent over by central casting to play the part of a college president--wavy gray hair, a stern look, often smoking a pipe. During his 20-year tenure, the chancellor survived campus riots, a "no confidence" vote by the Academic Senate, budget cuts that followed Ronald Reagan's election as governor in 1966 and at least one attempt by board members to oust him.
But the system grew, both in size and general academic reputation, during the Dumke years. In 1971, he even won an important political victory in Sacramento, a place the chancellor hated to visit, when Governor Reagan signed a bill changing the system's name to the California State University and Colleges. (Later, "colleges" was dropped.)
Dumke and the Board of Trustees thought this was important because it recognized that state college faculty members were capable of doing research and teaching advanced graduate students, even if they were prevented by law from offering doctoral degrees. The University of California opposed the name change bitterly but lost after an intense struggle, both in the Legislature and in the governor's office.
As the civil rights movement of the 1960s blended into the Vietnam War protests of the early 1970s, trouble erupted on several Cal State campuses. Administrative offices were burned at San Fernando Valley State. A computer center was destroyed at Fresno State, where for a time it appeared there would be a pitched battle between minority students--African Americans and Latinos--on the one hand, and white students, supported by local citizens, on the other.
The most serious trouble occurred at San Francisco State. In the winter of 1968Ð69, minority student demands for an autonomous "third world" college led to violent clashes between San Francisco police and students and their off-campus supporters.
The Board of Trustees fired one president, John Summerskill, and his replacement, Bob Smith, quit when the board ordered him to reopen the campus, a move that Smith believed would lead to greater violence and possible deaths.
The board's next choice, S.I. Hayakawa, had written a popular book on semantics many years before but was a little-known figure at San Francisco State and had no administrative experience. However, with a single action--yanking the sound wires from a protestors' truck--he became an overnight folk hero to the many Americans who disapproved of student protests.
Unfortunately, Hayakawa showed little interest in running San Francisco State, once he had the job. "He was one of the weakest presidents we ever had," Ted Meriam said. But that did not prevent the "folk hero" from being elected later to the United States Senate.
Dumke's 20-year run as chancellor was astonishing, coming at a time when campus presidents and system chiefs all over the country were burning out, or being thrown out, after four or five years. Even Dumke's harshest critics among the faculty marveled at his survival powers, one of them once referring to him as a "bobbing cork in a sea of negativities."
Pat Brown's generosity in funding higher education was helpful in Dumke's early years. So was the fact that there were plenty of students to go around, so the campuses were not competing fiercely for enrollment, as they sometimes did later.
Dumke was comfortable with the conservatives who were appointed to the Board of Trustees by Ronald Reagan, but the situation began to change in 1975 when Pat Brown's son Jerry replaced Reagan as governor.
The younger Brown appointed trustees who were generally more liberal than the Reagan group. Some were ardent feminists, others worked to make the colleges more environmentally sensitive or to increase minority representation among both students and faculty. "They were single-issue board members." Ellis McCune said, with some disdain. "They had no world view."
One of the new trustees was Beverly Hills attorney Blanche C. Bersch, who criticized some Cal State presidents for belonging to all-male clubs in their home towns, a practice Dumke defended.
"I knew about private clubs, I knew the issue backward and forward," Bersch said in an interview, noting that she had won several sex discrimination lawsuits and also had personally picketed the all-male Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles.
When Dumke and the presidents argued that these clubs were good places to meet important community leaders, Bersch replied that the same could be said of brothels and wondered if the system should pay the presidents' fees there as well.
"That kind of established me as a raving, maniacal feminist with no morals," Bersch said. "Dumke took it very personally. But that was okay. When I came on the board, it was strictly an 'old boys' club--even the women were 'old boys'. In a few years, it had changed."
And in a few years, Dumke was gone, replaced in 1982 by Wynetka Ann Reynolds, the provost at Ohio State University--an intelligent, energetic, ambitious woman with an explosive temper and a manner that many people found abrasive.
Reynolds was named on a split vote, after a tumultuous selection process. This was an unpromising start, from which some of her supporters believe the new chancellor never recovered.
"She was in trouble from Day One," Bersch said "The majority was behind her but there was a small group, this cadre, that was a constant thorn in her side, just waiting for her to make a misstep. People said she was paranoid. Well, she had every right to be, because there were people out to get her, right from the start."
Nevertheless, Reynolds had some ideas about where to take the Cal State system and she made considerable progress in almost eight years as chancellor. Admissions standards were raised. Teacher preparation was improved in a system that produces about 60 percent of the state's elementary and high school teachers.
"Magnet" high schools were opened on Cal State campuses, in collaboration with the Los Angeles public schools--performing arts at Cal State Los Angeles, science and mathematics at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Reynolds stepped up minority recruiting efforts and provided strong systemwide support for both fine arts and performing arts, areas that had been neglected on many Cal State campuses. She pushed for higher salaries for campus presidents while, at the same time, starting a formal process of evaluating the performance of the campus chiefs.
But her accomplishments were tarnished by a personal style that many on her staff and on the campuses saw as arrogant and abusive. Several people interviewed for this article said they were present when Reynolds delivered tongue-lashings to subordinates, complete with four-letter words, in front of others.
In early 1987, President Richard Butwell of Cal State Dominguez Hills died of a heart attack, two weeks after Reynolds urged him to resign because of declining enrollment and other problems on that campus. Presidents Thomas Day of San Diego State and Stephen Horn of Cal State Long Beach called the chancellor's treatment of Butwell "brutalizing" and "unconscionable."
Some think Reynolds' tirades often were caused by her inability to grasp the nature of the Cal State system.
"I believe she thought of CSU as one university, with many branches, like Ohio State had been," McCune said. "She never understood that CSU is a federation, with strong campus presidents and a weak central office. She tried to issue edicts from Long Beach and she ran into trouble with some of the stronger presidents," like Day and Horn.
William D. Campbell of Newport Beach and other key trustees came to believe that Reynolds was trying to concentrate power in the central office and that too much of the board's business was being conducted in secret.
"There were too many back room deals, too much information was hidden," Campbell said in an interview. "Decisions were made before the meetings were ever held. Phone calls were flying back and forth. Pressure was being applied for votes."
Reynolds, who is now chancellor of the City University of New York, declined to discuss her relations with the Board of Trustees, but Blanche Bersch said Reynolds was a victim of sexism.
"A woman can do the same things a man can do but she will be seen differently," Bersch said. "There's no question in my mind that Ann Reynolds was subjected to sexism. She had to jump through a lot of hoops that were not there for Dumke and that are not there for Munitz."
By 1987, trustee opinion was shifting against Reynolds and she apparently did little to shore up her position. "Ann was very good at a lot of things, but the care and feeding of the board was not one of them," said former Executive Vice Chancellor Herbert Carter.
Reynolds' opponents failed in an effort to dismiss her in the spring of 1987 but succeeded three years later, after the chancellor triggered the ire of Governor George Deukmejian and influential legislators by pushing through big pay raises for herself and the campus presidents at a closed-door Trustees meeting.
Reynolds also purchased five Ford Taurus automobiles for her top Long Beach aides for $99,900--just below the dollar level at which she would have needed approval from the state General Services Administration. The ensuing furor over the "five bulls," as the cars came to be called, was unimportant in itself but further eroded the chancellor's support.
In April 1990, Reynolds resigned. Ellis McCune left the presidency of Cal State Hayward to be interim chancellor until the arrival of Barry Munitz in August 1991.
McCune, who did not want the job permanently, provided a calming influence in a system that had grown jittery. He sharply reduced the amount of reporting from the campuses to the central office, a burden that McCune and other presidents had been complaining about for some time.
For Munitz, the Cal State job was a return to higher education after nine years in the business world. He had been chancellor of the University of Houston's main campus from 1977 to 1982, when he decided, at the age of 41, to make an abrupt change, becoming vice chairman of Maxxam Inc., a large Houston-based conglomerate.
Explaining the change recently, Munitz referred to his career as "bookends," with higher education at one end and the business world at the other. "I needed to know more about how the other side of the bookends worked," he said, "and I was tired of hearing that 'you've never met a payroll' argument."
The chancellor's corporate years were lucrative and fulfilling but not entirely happy. He, Maxxam Chairman Charles Hurwitz and the company itself have been sued for $100 million in damages by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision in connection with a failed savings and loan. The suit charges Hurwitz, Munitz and four others with "unsafe and unsound" banking practices, among other allegations.
Munitz has denied any wrong-doing and has also said he faces no personal financial risk because Maxxam agreed to indemnify him for any legal claims.
The chancellor's corporate past also has made him the target of protests by environmental groups because of Maxxam's takeover of Pacific Lumber Co. in Humboldt County, and the clear cutting of old growth redwood trees that followed.
According to Munitz, his Maxxam job largely involved dealing with governmental agencies and other external relations and that he had little to do with making company policy. "I was on the people side" of the operation, he stated, "not the money side."
The trustee committee that was seeking a new chancellor looked into these matters and evidently found nothing to allay the excitement they felt about landing a chancellor with both higher education and corporate experience. They raced to appoint Munitz, once they learned he was available. There were other candidates but sources close to the selection process said no one but Munitz received serious consideration.
So far, relations between the chancellor and the board have resembled a love feast. "He's the right guy in the right place at the right time in the right job," Trustee William Hauck said.
"Without question, the finest accomplishment since I've been on the board has been the hiring of Barry Munitz," said James Gray, a trustee since 1990. "He has seen us through difficult financial times and at the same time has accelerated the progress of CSU. I would call him the leading figure in American higher education today."
Munitz immediately set about rebuilding Cal State's reputation in Sacramento, which had declined dramatically toward the end of Ann Reynolds' chancellorship. Helped by Trustee Hauck and others, Munitz appears to have established good relations with Governor Pete Wilson, and he has managed to stay on reasonably good terms with both parties in the Legislature.
"After the Reynolds era, we needed to establish our credibility in Sacramento and Barry has done that," said Harold Goldwhite, professor of chemistry at Cal State Los Angeles and former chairman of the statewide Academic Senate.
The new chancellor is filled with the entrepreneurial spirit--opening the new Cal State Monterey Bay campus on a portion of an abandoned infantry training base at Fort Ord; acquiring the California Maritime Academy; planning a 23rd campus in Ventura County; promoting "charter campuses" that would be free from many systemwide regulations.
Not all of these ventures have been completely successful. Monterey Bay's first year has been chaotic, in part because the campus opened at least one year too soon. "Charter campuses" have not moved very far beyond the slogan stage. But the trustees admire the zest with which Munitz tackles new projects.
Most trustees like the fact that Munitz has introduced an element of "merit pay" into Cal State's faculty salary deliberations.
They also applaud his efforts to decentralize the 22-campus, 325,000-student system. "The decentralized approach was the only way to fly," said Trustee Theodore Saenger, a retired telephone company executive.
Munitz often refers to the Long Beach systemwide office as a "holding company," with the campuses as separate and independent entities, each responsible for its own success or failure. The phrase "each tub on its own bottom" is recited like a mantra throughout the Cal State system.
"Yes, I do use the 'holding company' analogy," Munitz said. "But I didn't come in here with the view that the corporate pattern was perfect and I was going to slam it down on academic institutions."
As many decisions as possible should be made at the campus level, the chancellor added, but "there are some things only the system can do: at the front end, strategic planning and allocation of resources and, on the other side, audit and insistence on accountability--'did you do what you said you were going to do?'"
Munitz and Executive Vice Chancellor Molly Corbett Broad cut the headquarters staff by 20 percent (although they have been rebuilding it in some areas recently) and have instructed their lieutenants to be helpful supporters of local campus endeavors, not simply enforcers of statewide rules.
"This was the most cumbersome bureaucracy I've ever encountered," said Broad, who worked previously at Syracuse University and in the Arizona higher education system. "All of the managerial flexibility had been drained out of the organizationÉWe have tried to reverse that by moving decision-making closest to the place where the effects will be felt."
Munitz and Broad have gotten rid of most of the people in the Long Beach headquarters who worked for Chancellors Reynolds or Dumke. In the process, "they have stripped the place of institutional memory," said a veteran staff member.
But most presidents and other campus officials who were interviewed for this article praised the cuts in central staff and the efforts to decentralize.
"There is absolutely no question there have been enormous improvements," said Donald R. Gerth, who has worked in the Cal State system since 1958 and has been president of Cal State Sacramento since 1983.
Rigid formulas that once determined how much money each campus received have been loosened, although that process was underway before Munitz arrived. Within some guidelines, campuses now have more flexibility to concentrate on one academic field instead of another, or to decide what the balance should be between full-time and part-time faculty members.
Campus officials do most of their own staff hiring, though a wise president checks with Long Beach before making a controversial appointment.
The campuses have been given more purchasing authority. However, they still must buy their furniture from the state prison system, which, according to a Cal State official, "displays all the characteristics of a monopolistic enterprise--much of the furniture is poorly made and it is usually delivered late."
Vice Chancellor Broad would like to allow each campus to handle its own payroll and pay its own bills but the State Comptroller's office has balked, agreeing only to a three-campus study of how this might be done.
Although the campus presidents and other administrators generally approve of the decentralizing moves that Munitz and Broad have made, some faculty members are less impressed.
"We used to have some idea what the CSU was," said a veteran professor and former top administrator. "The 'each tub on its own bottom' approach is fine, and necessary in many ways, but what does the system stand for as a system?"
Another veteran faculty leader said, "Barry Munitz and Molly Broad have encouraged a managerial style on the campuses that is very strong on executive decision-making and very weak on consultation. As a result, there has been a noticeable decline in campus collegiality."
The decentralization of academic affairs has been a special target for criticism.
"A lot of the decentralization was needed and it has encouraged people to do better and to be more competitive," said Lyman Heine, professor of political science at Cal State Fresno, who was the faculty representative on the Board of Trustees from 1987 to 1991. "But at the same time, we have lost something and that is the academic planning function in the chancellor's office--it has been decimated."
Faculty groups at Fresno and on other campuses are worried about declining standards. They point to grade inflation, too many "special admission" students, too many remedial classes, too many large classes with limited writing assignments or none--a host of problems related to academic quality.
"I'm hearing more and more that we need to stress academics again," said Alex Gonzales, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Cal State Fresno. "We certainly need good managers but we need to apply those management skills to what goes on in academics-- in teaching and learning."
Harold Goldwhite, of Cal State Los Angeles, said part of the problem is that Munitz is "very excited by the political side of things" but "he's not terribly interested in academic affairs."
The chancellor responded, "I understand the concern, I hear it, but the question is, what kind of meaningful systemwide role should there be? How do you get involved more aggressively in systemwide academic planning and still maintain campus autonomy?"
If declining standards and lack of academic direction are problems for Cal State, they were seldom mentioned during a series of interviews with trustees, except for the remedial education issue. The board seems content to leave these concerns, and most others, in the hands of Munitz and his staff.
And why not? Since Munitz has taken office, the board's divisions have been largely healed. Their image has been polished, in Sacramento and elsewhere around the state. They have avoided negative publicity, for the most part. And, perhaps for the first time in the system's 35-year history, they are happy not to be the UC Board of Regents.
