What Sonoma State’s Massive Budget Cuts Mean for the University’s Future
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Faced with a brutal budget deficit that had been growing for years, the interim president of Sonoma State University announced plans to eliminate academic departments, lay off dozens of faculty, and end the university's Division II intercollegiate athletics program.

Faculty, students, and staff are understandably very mad, but slash and enrollment has declined 40% since the years before the pandemic. We'll be joined by the interim president, students, and critics. It's all coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

It's been a tumultuous few years up at Sonoma State. Two university presidents have been deposed. Enrollment is way down. State funding has declined. Past administrations have noted the budget deficit but have not actually closed the gap between what the university brings in and what it spends.

A new plan revealed by interim president Emily Couture makes deep cuts to tenured faculty and lecturers both, as well as ending intercollegiate athletics at the school.

Critics of the current budget cuts say that administrators' salaries and other categories should be cut before faculty and sports. We're joined first by Santa Rosa Press Democrat investigative columnist Marisa Endicott to get us caught up on the situation. Then in a few minutes, we're going to talk with a faculty member and interim president, Kutra herself. Welcome, Marisa. Thanks so much for having me. OK, so talk to us about the nature of the budget cuts, like what's going away and what's not.

Sure. So a lot of the cuts are in the instructional area. You know, you have 47 faculty and lecturer positions, another 60 of those positions that might not be up for renewal. You have the end of 36 coaches and staff, all of the NCAA teams, which is like about 11 of them. And then there's the closure of six departments and a couple dozen majors. Hmm.

So is there any disagreement about the size of the budget deficit itself? Sometimes in the schools, like the K through 12, there'll be these big disagreements about, well, how big is the budget actually? Is there a disagreement here? I think that the focus has more been on how they are deciding to close that gap rather than on the size of the budget gap itself. Yeah.

For people who haven't been paying attention to what's been happening at Sonoma State, why is this school in this position? For example, let's just go with the enrollment first. Why is enrollment down?

Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of factors here. Enrollment at a bunch of the CSU campuses are down, especially in Northern California. Since the pandemic, more rural campuses have struggled to attract students. There's just less people around there. But Sonoma State has seen the steepest decline at 38% in the last decade. And so yeah, there's factors like

COVID and there's factors like the demographic cliff where there's just less 18 year olds, maybe less students entering. But then there's factors that are more specific to Sonoma County, like the history of wildfires there, the cost of living. And then there's the criticism that there's just been a lot of mismanagement of the school. There's been a lot of leadership turnover that hasn't helped them attract students. And there has been a real lack of focus on recruitment as they've started to face these challenges. Yeah.

What about the Cal State system as a whole? Is that part of this too?

Definitely. And I think some of the criticism is like focused on SSU and some of the focus has been some of the criticism has been focused on CSU as well. I mean, they're they're facing their own budget hole. Part of these cuts are because of the anticipated state budget funding cuts that is going to be, you know, what, about six million as part of that twenty four million dollar deficit, you know.

As I said, a lot of the Northern California campuses have been struggling. Sonoma State has the steepest cuts and some of the first ones here, but there are anticipated cuts at a lot of other campuses as well. Is this a thing where the Cal State officials are essentially forcing the issue? Like they're saying, make these cuts or else? Or is it more... Or is some of this at least optional at the Sonoma State level? So, I mean...

It's definitely forced in a way because SSU was required to balance its budget this year. That is what they have been putting out in the announcement, in their explanation. So that did come from above. I think SSU has been in the hole for quite some time as well. So there is a kind of acknowledgement by the local administration that this is something that needs to be addressed. But CSU has definitely signed off on the plan so far and kind of did direct that. I mean, is this a done deal?

So, no, it's not a done deal in that, you know, a lot of these positions need to be negotiated with the unions. You know, there's a lot that could develop there. And also, you know, if state funding changes, you know, because it's just the proposed budget at this point, that could mean quite a difference. Yeah.

Let's start bringing in some other folks who are directly involved here. Let's bring in Don Romsberg, who's the chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State. Also author of the book Contested Curriculum, LGBTQ History Goes to School out in April from Rutgers University Press. Welcome, Don. Hi, thank you. So sorry to hear about the department, which I think is going to be cut. But when did you find out and how did you find out?

Yeah, I mean, one of the really difficult things about this was the way that the president and provost rolled out the cuts. And they did it in a way that produces the most harm and chaos for students, faculty, and our community. So instead of proposing a draft version of the cuts in the fall and then moving through a deliberative process, they dumped them on all of us in the first week of spring classes. So I received an email that after 20 years of superlative service,

at Sonoma State, which Sonoma State has actually given me awards for, that not only was my department being eliminated, but that I was being let go as a full professor with full tenure rights. I had to teach a half an hour after that.

It was a devastating day. It was a devastating week. And the students are shaken and traumatized by this. The faculty are furious and unnerved. And in a very practical and material sense for faculty, this comes at a time when the academic job cycle runs August to December, basically. So

In the best case scenario, I might be able to find another tenure track job in like 18 months. So I'm literally wondering in August how I'm going to make my home payments, how I'm going to feed my family, how I'm going to have access to health care. I mean, in this kind of process, which is kind of necessarily going to be kind of grisly, the process is one thing. What do you think about the actual nature of the budget deficit and how it's being closed?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's some real problems with the way in which it's happening. The acting president has been brought in with really little knowledge about Sonoma State itself and is coming in with an ax and chopping away at things that have been institutionally important and important in the community for many decades. Sonoma State's Women's and Gender Studies program began in 1970. It was one of the first in the nation

Our early alumni were the founders of Women's History Month and central figures in Sonoma County's women's movement and build up of social services across the 1970s and 1980s, the social justice movement. Recent alumni are leaders in national LGBTQ+ organizations

They serve in key roles in healthcare and mental health and social service providing across California. They're policymakers and advocates for women and survivors of sexual violence, immigrants, LGBTQ plus people, people of color, and so much more.

So the way in which these cuts are being made seems to be clumsy at best and completely ignorant of the larger social harm and social costs that are coming with what are ostensibly economic savings cuts.

I should add that Women's and Gender Studies is not actually a department where its cost exceeds what it's able to do. It's a profitable department. We actually are a department because we serve so many general education students through our teaching.

We serve about 70% of our classes are general education classes. And so we have so many students that are in our classes that by...

taking away those classes for students, it's going to raise up costs for other departments and for the school overall. I just want to make sure I'm understanding this point correctly. If I were to cut the budget different ways, would I see that the Women and Gender Studies Department shows a loss, but if I cut it, including the services that are provided to the population at large, then it would show that it's bringing in money to the school?

Well, actually, no. So according to the administration's own outside consulting firm, Gray Data, just literally in terms of butts in seats versus the cost of instruction for women's and gender studies, we are a net profit for the university of about $200,000 a year. So

Not only are they not saving money by eliminating us in a sheer economic sense of students' tuition versus instruction cost, the reality is that the social harm to our communities and the social harm to our campus are so much larger than that as well. Marisa, I know that you've sat down with Emily Koutreras, who's going to be on shortly, to

Did the interim president reveal the sort of like algorithm or sort of methods that were used to sort of pick departments and faculty in terms of the costs? Yeah.

So, you know, she laid out some of the factors. She's, you know, as you just mentioned, there was outside consultants that factored in, as well as kind of a look over the last couple years at the academic mix and where they think the priorities should be moving forward to, like, best appeal to the local workforce. But, like, as you can see, a lot of...

Faculty, you know, see it differently, have their own analyses, are really questioning some of the decision making into whether it actually makes financial or like larger cultural sense. So, Don, real quick, Don Romsberg.

What would your alternative be? Like, is there a package of cuts that could avoid, you know, the deep cuts to faculty that you see? Or do cuts need to be made and you feel like small changes could be made?

No, I think that's a great question. One of the upsetting things about this is the way in which the language of austerity and reorganization around high demand majors, which is the language that the president uses, is the same language that we're hearing out of legislators in Utah and Texas and Florida.

And these are used to cut different kinds of programs that support diversity, inclusion, equity, and so on. And so I really think that SSU has to rethink its metrics to value high-impact programs and departments as opposed to obsessing over high-demand majors. Our

has over 30,000, has in the last like 25 years had over 30,000 hours of internship in the community. And that will go away. Those work hours will not be there. And so I guess I have three suggestions. Well, hold on. We're going to have to head into break. So I got to cut in there. But I'm going to come back to you on it and get those suggestions on the other side of the break. We're talking about major budget cuts

Recently announced at Sonoma State with Don Romsberg, chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, and Marisa Endicott, a reporter at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. We'd love to hear from you too. Forum at kqed.org. Be back with more right after the break.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about deep budget cuts at Sonoma State University. Joined by the Santa Rosa Press Democrats, Marisa Endicott, as well as the chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State, Don Romsberg. We want to hear from you if you've been affected by these cuts. The number is 866-733-6786. Forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, on Instagram, or KQED Forum, or you can head over to the Discord community.

Don, but real quick before we bring on interim president Emily Couture, you said you had three things that you wanted to that you would propose as an alternative.

Yeah, so I mean the very first one is at the level of Sonoma State, which is we need to slow down this process. We need to make it a deliberative process that brings in more factors to consider for such a radical decision. This should be a process that's rolled out over a year and a half or two years, not over three months. So that would be the first one. The second one would be that the chancellor needs to use some of the reserves

of the CSU, which are great, in order to empower Sonoma State to really have a thoughtful and deliberative process around how to reorganize in a way that doesn't cause maximum harm to maximum people, which is what the current plan is doing. And then finally, Governor Newsom and the legislature need to step up and they need to fully fund the CSU and they need to recognize that doing so is a way of pushing back against

all of the ways in which we are being besieged by the federal government and its politics right now, and reinvest in a California-style quality public higher education system that creates the engines of change and social justice and prosperity and purpose for all of us.

And what is central to that is having things like women's and gender studies that protects not only our most vulnerable students, but teaches all of our students how to embrace a more expansive way of understanding our community and our society and each other.

Don Romsberg, thanks so much. Professor at Sonoma State University, also author of the forthcoming book, Contested Curriculum, LGBTQ History Goes to School. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. I want to bring on Emily Couture, who's interim president at Sonoma State University. Welcome.

Thank you. Happy to be here. So obviously you have come into a difficult situation here and proposed these cuts. From your perspective, like why were the cuts needed of this sort of depth and speed? They're needed because there is a very large...

Budget deficit at Sonoma State that has been growing over the years and has been exacerbated greatly by actions from the state of California, basically, and quite pointedly, the governor's projected budget and a 7.95% increase.

decrease in in-state funding for universities. The campus over the last five years has worked very hard, and I know it has been very traumatic, trying to deal with the budget shortfall because of greatly decreasing enrollment by taking a lot of cuts that have been

Well, they have been very difficult for the campus community. $26.3 million is hard to find at a university at any time. But that $26.3 million, when you add in what's coming from the state, was not enough. And we now have a $24 million deficit. We have used much of our reserve, if not quite all of our reserve,

toward one-time funding to carry over our debt. It's down to about $7 million. I'm sorry? It's down to about $7 million. There's a goal of over $40 million, I think it was, something in that range. Well, our debt is $24 million. Our gap, our budget gap is $24 million. Oh, I meant the reserves. Sorry, I meant the reserves that were left. The reserves, yes. The reserves are down to about $7 million, which is about...

30 days, one month's worth of reserves. Yeah. You know, I want to know how the factors that were laid out, both by the professor as well as by, you know, other people in the campus community, like what were the things that went into deciding what particular programs and faculty would be cut? Yeah.

There has been ongoing discussion for several years about the programs at Sonoma State. Before I got here, a faculty committee over the last two years has been working on an academic master plan to move the campus toward programming that...

is needed at universities currently. We've had inside advice, inside look at it, outside advice. My understanding is that there was a faculty

Senate committee that was looking at programs and was looking at potential programs for elimination and told the provost that they couldn't decide and turned it back to her to make decisions. Really, the primary factors that have gone into deciding which ones, which programs to cut are

Probably the major one is the number of majors students who are majoring in a program that would be affected. And did it matter whether or not that major or department was sort of in a narrow sense a net positive for the school? Or was it seen as there would be a decrease in administrative burden or something if you were to shrink the number of majors or departments?

Well, it is primarily the savings in ongoing costs. And I think

We have a lot of wonderful people here, and I don't like to look at people as cost centers, if you will. But in fact, our major area of cost is in personnel. And to relieve an ongoing budget deficit, which is our ongoing funds, we have to cut personnel. Yeah.

To get that $24 million. So, yes, what a program adds to revenue for the institution does make a difference. But the primary goal for us as we were looking to take the cuts that we have to take is to cause...

to the smallest number of students. Ideally, we would harm no students and none of our wonderful faculty and staff. But unfortunately, like many institutions across the country, we are facing decreasing enrollment and decreasing state support. And that is leading to making some changes that the universities are just not...

We just don't like to take. And it is very unfortunate. I heard Mr. Romsberg, I hadn't realized he was going to be on, but I'm glad he was and glad I got to hear him. And he talked about three steps. Probably we agree on number three, that the state of California needs to step up.

And support state universities because we are the major engine for transformation of people's lives. And I don't just mean economically, though I do mean economically. But broadening their perspectives, enriching their lives. Universities do so much for communities and to not appropriately fund universities

California's public universities, particularly the CSU, is very short-sighted. What about the other two components of his plan, the chancellor of the CSU dipping into their reserves as well as slowing down the process so it took a year and a half or two rather than three months?

Well, the second one, there is an idea that the CSU has years worth of reserves. Like us, they have about 31 days of reserves. And they cannot afford to step in and help all of the universities that are suffering from budget cuts. All of us are suffering from the 7.95%.

And those that are really suffering are those that are mainly in Northern California where there is shrinking enrollment. So I think we may be the first, but we're not the last CSU where you are going to see issues. What about the speed of the process? Yeah.

From my perspective, the process started long before I got here. As I mentioned, the provost's office has been working for several years on first restructuring and then looking at the academic programs and developing metrics. And there was, last year before I got here, a Senate

a Senate committee or subcommittee, special committee that was looking at exactly the same issues. So decisions that were made were the results of several years worth of discussion within academic affairs about academic programs. And the cut to programs is about $8 million out of the 24 million that we need to take as an institution.

Last thing on the speed slash process. What do you say to critics who allege that you waited until the semester had begun to announce the cuts, even though they were already sort of in motion and locked in before that? Well, they weren't absolutely locked in before then. We were waiting for January 10th to come by and get through the system analysis of the governor's budget proposal.

to see where we were. We were hoping against hope that we would not have $6 million taken out of our budget, that we would not have to plan for that, that the governor would not come through with that 7.95% cut because that $6 million could go a long way for us.

So that was part of it. The other part was we wanted to wait until faculty were back on campus. We wanted to wait until not so much the students. And granted, I have heard from many people that it looks like we waited until students were back on campus so we could capture their tuition and fees. That's not why we waited as we did, but it was really to make sure key people were back on campus and

would be available for discussions. One area we've cut, as well as academic programs, that has caused a great deal of quite understandable consternation is the area of academics. Athletics. I'm sorry, athletics, right. And athletics, that actually affects a good number more students than athletics.

Cutting the programs that we're cutting directly. All of the program cuts affect all of the students in some ways or another, but direct effect from the programs is less than the direct effect on our student athletes. And we thought it was appropriate for the...

athletic director and the assistant athletic director be here when students and coaches heard that we were going to have to cut our athletic programs. So that's why we waited until the first week of classes. We also, and it turned out that this didn't happen, we also wanted to have this done before

before the system came in and talked with the campus community on February 4th about what the campus wanted in a new president, a new ongoing president, not an interim president. And we thought this information would be essential. It would be a wasted time on campus if

If we came back a week or two or three later and told the campus about what was going on, they should be able to respond to it when the committee was here. Now, that search has been postponed. And so that, in retrospect, and as an historian, I know that...

hindsight truly is 2020 but in retrospect we could have waited longer to let people know but

But at the time, it was appropriate or seemed appropriate. Interim president, there are, of course, and I'm sure you'll understand this, a lot of people writing in saying, you know, for example, listener Elizabeth saying, why don't the administrators take pay cuts? You know, a couple of years ago, Judy Sakaki, who was the president of the school, had a total pay and benefits package of, you know, $650,000. So people are saying, why don't why don't the administrators take pay cuts?

Well, the administrators, a lot of administrators don't make very good salaries, by the way. There are levels. We're a state institution, so we have levels, administrator 1s, administrator 2s, 3s and 4s. I'm a 4s, and there are administrator 3s and 4s, and the 4s,

in fact, volunteered. It's the president's cabinet, the vice presidents and me. We agreed that it would be appropriate for us to take salary cuts. But the precedent that that sets for the system is something that the system wanted to avoid. Doesn't that seem like a good precedent, though, that everyone would share in the burden of these cuts? Well, and I understand people saying that. I do. But that is not...

So what I'm hearing is that the system itself said don't take the pay cuts. Well, that's not what I said. So and I would also add that there are we might not be able to take pay cuts, but there are other ways in which.

People at the at the four level can make a contribution to to the deficit, which would be through through charitable contributions. So what other changes might be possible to make to this plan at this point?

Well, I think the most important thing is if we can get that $6.02 million back from the state, then we could begin a deliberative process about what goes back in to our budget.

I talked with a group of faculty and staff yesterday about how we could handle that. Interestingly, SSU does not have a defined process for adding money into the budget and how it might be spent.

But I have worked with a process that I think we might adopt where we bring all the stakeholders to the table with proposals about what to put back into the budget and have hearings over what those might be. And so that, I think, is really the one way that we can see a change. And boy, you

Boy, you have no idea how much I hope that we get those $6 million back. And I would strongly encourage everyone to advocate to the state of California that they need not only to

to rescind that 7.95% cut, but that they add additional funds into the CSU. The CSU has an incredible mission to serve the people of the state of California. It is the primary engine along, as I've said before, along with the community colleges for providing higher education to this state.

Thank you. That's interim president of Sonoma State University, Emily Couture. We're also joined by Marisa Endicott, a reporter with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, as well as earlier we were joined by Don Romsberg, who's chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State. We're going to get to a bunch of your calls. I know there's a lot of people who want to be in on this conversation. You might want to try the email to forum at kqed.org. We'll be back with more right after the break.

Welcome back to Forum, Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about some hotly contested budget cuts at Sonoma State University with interim president of the university, Emily Couture. Also, we're joined by Marisa Endicott. And I wanted to bring in a student, Emma Williams, dance and history major. Thank you for joining us. Hi there. Thank you for having me. So, Emma, tell us about your reaction to the cuts.

Um, so like everybody else, we all found out in an email 1030am on the second day of school. Like Professor Romberg said, it was devastating to see those words in an email. My all of my dance and theater faculty were actively teaching classes when they got that news. And I think that is truly devastating to learn that you lost your job while you are teaching a class. So personally, I feel like the news would have been better sent out

First of all, not in an email. The president said at a previous meeting that we had last Thursday at town hall, when it was asked why it was sent out in an email, she said that it just wasn't possible to tell everybody. But I think that my teachers and my faculty deserve the decency to be told to their faces before the semester started that they were going to be laid off. Yeah.

What does it mean for you as a person? I mean, the process is one thing, but the actual cuts themselves. What do those mean for you as a dance major? I feel like my future just kind of imploded right in front of me. I...

Immediately my heart just dropped and what was in my mind is what am I gonna do? What are my peers gonna do? What are my teachers gonna do and I currently am rushing to film Auditions for other schools I am so so so thankful for other schools in the CSU system for working with me and my peers to help us find a place where we belong because all of the transfer applications have closed I feel as if

the administration waited until all of us came back on campus because I would have done the transfer application and I would have taken a semester off if I knew this was going to happen or I would have just focused on my

my other things and I would have done a transfer application but because of this I'm having to last minute try and find a school and it's honestly been really stressful. I had a plan set for my future. I chose SSU. I had a plan with the amazing program that I found here. I love the dance and theater program at Sonoma State and I'm so dearly saddened that we might possibly be losing it and

It has been really stressful, I'm sure, for everybody who has lost something to try and figure out what they're going to do next. Hey, really appreciate your perspective, Emma. Rooting for you to find a good landing spot to do dance history. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I also want to bring in, before we go back to interim president Couture, I want to bring in LJ, who's up there at Sonoma State. Welcome. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it.

Oh, yeah, go ahead. So I've been here since 2015, and I feel like there's a huge elephant on the campus, so to speak, that no one's really addressing. The...

The administration and the leadership group has endlessly talked about all the cuts and how the state's the big bad guy, but there has been very little effort to attract students to pivot from a business model that benefited from a time when the location of the school and there was a lot of people going to school. And Sonoma State was a lot of people's second choice, but they still had a waiting list and they were able to operate

Like going to school here is not easy. Everything is difficult. It's not an easy place to go to school. And when that pool of students dropped and there were less people going to school,

they did nothing to bring them in. And even as you hear the president now talking, you hear everyone talking, where's the programs and the implementation of we need to bring people in. We need to change, maybe change the focus of the school or find a way to make it work. And they just cut. It's like we're going to

bring more people in by cutting services. I mean, the apathy that emanates from those buildings is palpable. I mean, there's nothing going on. And then they just say, well, we just need to make more cuts. And that seems to be the only solution. And it's been really hard to watch. Appreciate your perspective, LJ. Interim President Couture, I think you actually agree with some of those criticisms that the school has not done a good job recruiting students.

Absolutely. LJ, I think you are absolutely correct. And I will tell you that what we found is that the school has not recruited students over the last years because it used to have a waiting list. And one of the things that we are implementing, but unfortunately, it's one of the things that takes time, is a series of steps that

to do real recruiting of students to what they want to see. And the first step is to move from having a lot of roadblocks in the way for students who are applying to making it easier to apply. The second thing is having well-trained recruiters. Our recruiters have operated in good faith, but they haven't had the training they needed to get out and really

seek out students and encourage them to come here. My preference would be not to cut programs if we could avoid cutting programs, but to add to what we have and have a program mix that appeals to a wider group of students than what we have.

right now. You are right on, LJ, about if I'm understanding you correctly. Right now, we unfortunately need to take some cuts in order to reset and go in a better direction. The world has changed.

And Sonoma State in some ways did not change, did not change with it, unfortunately. And again, it's really easy to have 20-20 hindsight and see where things went wrong. I'm not criticizing who went before because I'm not in their shoes, but I do believe that I know what we need to do now. Marisa, I wanted to bring you in real quick on the sort of the pandemic impact.

impact to Sonoma State versus other schools? Like, was it kind of middle of the road? Was it did it was it impacted in a greater way because of the fires that had occurred in previous years? Or what would you say? Yeah, I think that kind of compounded with some of these other things like the North Bay fires, the

as well as the high cost of living in the area, you know, and the fact that like ultimately it is a rural campus compared to some of the more urban campuses. And with people after the pandemic staying closer to home, it just was, you know, not attracting the same, you know, demographics as it was. Yeah. Yeah. Let's bring in one more caller here with the interim president, Nick in Boulder, Colorado. Welcome.

Good morning. So President Kutcher, one of the things that I've heard you say at town hall meetings is that, you know, these departments are being cut, but there's courses from the cut programs like WGS and others that will still be offered to students. And I'm wondering, right, if these faculty have all been laid off, can you explain how that will work and how the quality of these sort of supplementary courses would compare to when they were being taught by subject matter experts in their field?

Thanks, Nick. Appreciate that. Intern President? Yeah. And thank you, Nick. There are some programs that are being cut where not all the faculty have been, are in the process of being laid off. Two examples I would give you would be economics and physics, where we didn't have a lot of students in the majors, but students absolutely have to take them for their degree programs.

For women and gender studies, I don't know whether we will have actual courses from women and gender studies moving forward. I don't set the curriculum, but I can guarantee you that the...

the more general learning that you get from women and gender studies and the more specific learning you get will be, has to be covered in general education courses and that we do not put people into the classroom who are not people who are well educated in their fields. - One last question for you, 'cause I know you gotta go in a minute.

It comes down to like what you think will grow from here. You know, what are the programs that you feel like have a possibility of restoring some of the thousands of students who are not going to Sonoma State, but who might have in previous years?

That's a pretty good analysis. Exactly. I mean, that is part of it. And then there are additional things that we need to be doing for students that we are not doing that I believe will attract students here. Talked a little bit about how we're changing recruiting. We have had no marketing, no marketing. We do have a grant from the system.

to develop a marketing program, and I'm really pleased about that. But we also, and I think this is very important for the university to develop, we have not had much in terms of really developing career pathways for our students. It's kind of different from when I went to school.

Students and their families expect if they invest in a college education, and it is an investment, that they will be able to get meaningful jobs when they leave.

And so that would be like linking up with like health care systems in Sonoma County or around the area. Absolutely. And I mean, if I were queen of the world, I would say every every student ought to have an internship or a couple of internships along the way in areas that they're interested in. Some students cannot do that, but I think it's incumbent upon us to do everything we can to.

to see that they do find a way to do it. And we have the capacity to match them up with internships. But we will start from orientation the summer before students enter on working with students to see the way in which all their courses, not just the courses in their majors, but all their courses contribute to what they're going to be when they leave here.

which is someone who has a job but is also a good citizen, a leader in their community, and so forth. And I think we just really need to do a better job of helping students see that and understand that so that they see there is a return on their investment.

Thank you so much. Interim president of Sonoma State University, Emily Kutcher. I really appreciate you coming on the air with us this morning. And I know it's not an easy situation to be in. Thank you. Well, thank you. I'm happy to be on my favorite radio station. Thanks so much. I want to bring in another student up at Sonoma State, Taylor Hodges, a sophomore member of the soccer team and a communications major. Welcome, Taylor.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. So we haven't talked much about athletics. What's the situation for you all? You've got scholarships. Can you get into the transfer portal, which people may not know, but college sports have been totally transformed in this way. Can you get to another school? Do you want to? What's going on? So my situation currently, as most of my teammates and pretty much every other athlete here at SSU, we've all entered the portal. I mean, as of now, because the semester's already started, it's

very hard to transfer to another school as of now, so we'll probably have to do that during the spring semester, looking for another place to go in the fall. And the portal is a really hard place to be. I mean, for people who've never been in the portal or never really heard of it or have never really been involved in collegiate sports, it's a hard place to be. I mean, most people enter the portal and don't even find a school to go to. The portal honestly doesn't give out a lot of information, and some people just sit there for a while. And so it

It puts a lot of stress on athletes already who are trying to keep their grades up and are trying to perform in their sports as well as coaches, because now they have to find a place for their athletes to go as well as look for another job. What about the impact to your major or your professors?

Yes, I'm a communications major and they're currently my at SSU. They had recently already merged communications with cinematography because our major was already so small. So now that they're trying to merge it with the arts, I would have to in order to obtain my degree from here, I'd have to spend more money and take more classes and ultimately probably stay here another year to obtain my degree, which is not possible.

something that I'm able to do. So I'll have to look for another school. Oh man. Taylor, best of luck to you in the, uh, in the transfer portal and trying to find another, uh, another school. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. Yeah. You know, Marisa, you know, we're hearing, um, about, you know, these like student stories, uh,

What do we know about the actual next steps in this process, like in the implementation kind of look ahead? Yeah. So when it comes to students and kind of the rest of, you know, how these cuts will play out for them, you know, what we do know is that if you are a junior or later, you are allowed to finish out your course of study. That might come in the form. It might look a little different because you have a teach-out plan. But, you know...

So that, I think, would leave about 56 people who have to actually change majors. The rest are either finishing the spring or will be able to finish in the next couple of years. Of course, many more are affected through general education classes and just kind of the like...

tumult of all this. Is there going to be some legal stuff around this too? There's a lawsuit that I think that some students have filed, right? Yeah, so with athletics already they have filed, you know, with the help of alumni and just the rest of the athletic community, they've filed civil rights complaints already kind of on the grounds of

there being a lack of due process as well as kind of a disproportionate impact on faculty and student athletes that have come from historically marginalized backgrounds. And then there's also been an announcement of an intent for a class action that hasn't

been filed yet. But yeah, there has already been a lot of movement in that regard. They're kind of looking to wherever they can here. And what about other levels of government, right? I mean, we've got the state. I mean, I don't think people are expecting much from the federal government. But what about like the county, which seems like it would take a hit with these cuts?

Yeah, so, so far, I mean, you've seen a lot of support from the local political community. Sonoma State is the largest public employer. You know, it feeds a huge percent of the workforce. I think there's been some economic studies done that showed this big, you know, benefit to the community. So there's been a lot of kind of...

kind of put out in statements by the board of supervisors, by state legislators. There hasn't been anything really specific outlined yet, but there has been kind of references to kind of the help that the state put into, for instance, transitioning Humboldt into a polytechnical institute. Not that that would be the same here, but just the fact that like that required intervention, that required investment. So, you know, this is some of the things on the table.

It does feel like maybe this is just kind of the end of the beginning here of this story, right? There's a lot more that seems like it's going to play out over the coming years. Definitely, yeah. Yeah.

Last few comments from listeners. I'm sorry we couldn't get to everybody. Scott writes in to say, you know, I'm a professor at SF State. We also fear these cuts. We know that Sonoma State used a, quote, cost to major formula recommended by a consulting firm. Is Sonoma State most interested in providing a good education or the most cost effective but minimal educational offerings? And what is Sonoma State doing to increase revenue rather than just make cuts?

David writes, one in 10 people working in California are graduates of the CSU system. CSU graduates generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues to the state of California. The ongoing and relentless cuts to CSU will send the entire system into a death spiral that will irrevocably harm education and the California economy. Last listener comment, listener writes, from an operational standpoint, this outcome is no surprise.

My mother-in-law was in the very first graduating class in the nursing program. My sister graduated in the 90s and my daughter graduated in 2020. I've worked at Sonoma State since 2015. I deeply care for the school and I'm afraid that it was just given last rites.

Let's hope not. We're talking about the major budget cuts recently announced at Sonoma State University. Marisa Endicott, thanks so much for your guidance through here. Thanks so much for having me. Earlier, we were joined by Don Romsberg, professor at Sonoma State, Emily Couture, interim president at Sonoma State, and dance and history major Emma Williams, and a sophomore on the soccer team and a communications major, Taylor Hodges. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kemp.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.