Students across the California State University system are suffering through class cancellations, overcrowding in classes and a near double in student fee costs since 2002.

They are repeatedly told these issues result from budgetary pressures and deficits in the CSU system. Yet with continual student fee increases, a supposed remedy to the situation, there has been no real improvement in the ailments of our learning environment.

With approval of recent pay raises for 28 top CSU executives, including President Gonzales, it’s difficult not to question what our student fees are really going to. With Sacramento State student fees now at just over $3,500 a year, are students receiving what they’ve been promised or even their money’s worth?

Sac State boasts itself as “one of the nation’s best higher education values, with student fees among the lowest in the nation.”

It takes more than low fees to make a university “one of the nation’s best higher education values.” It takes more than what your money is worth to make a university a “best” value instead of a good or fair one. To describe Sac State today as a fair value is pushing it somewhat.

There are key components of quality higher education lacking at Sac State which stop it from rising to “one of the nation’s best.” These include: learning-friendly class sizes, a growing and diversifying course catalog, the ability to graduate in four years from a four-year-institution, and ample research opportunities for faculty and students.

Small class sizes are a rarity on our campus. In my three years at Sac State, I’ve had very few. Some of my classes didn’t have enough desks for all of the enrolled students. Despite the apparent situation, the Sac State website boasts to future students its “student-faculty ratio of 21 to 1” and commitment to “quality teaching in small classes.”

President Gonzalez, in an open letter to the university community last year, denied Senate allegations that the student-faculty ratio had increased. Although the campus student-teacher ratio as a whole has not increased, when calculated within colleges or departments, many of the ratios are higher than 21 to 1.

Sac State’s academic strength is weakening. Full-time professors are retiring and separating from the university without being replaced by full-timers. Many other professors at Sac State are being pulled from their specialty courses to teach core classes. As a result of the loss and redistribution of full-time professors, classes are being cutback.

Some courses are cut back to a few sections offered a semester. They then get filled beyond capacity and are stretched beyond their normal academic limits. Other courses are offered only once every third semester. Some are not offered at all anymore. These course cutbacks result in overcrowded classes, overworked professors, and a decrease in elective choices.

Course cutbacks not only threaten Sac State’s academic strength, but also effect graduation rates. At Sac State, of the 65 percent who remain after two years, only 9 percent graduate in the expected four year time. Many students wait an extra semester or two before graduating because they didn’t get into the classes they needed. For some students, this problem is compounded when financial hardships force them to attend only part-time.

Consistently strong academic programs with ample course availability would bring Sac State up to a standard that all universities should be at. It would make Sac State a good value. That last step in making it “one of the nation’s best,” which is what Sac State promises, is to create more research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students.

CSU has a list of 20 “comparable institutions” it uses to measure itself against. This same list was used to justify the recent executive pay increase. Although the list is flawed scientifically for calculating gaps in executive pay, it would do well as an example of what our university should strive to be. Many schools on the list offer extensive research opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in.

Sac State professors are expected to do research and have their work published but many professors have too heavy a workload to do much. If professors were not stretched so thin at Sac State, research programs could be established. Some of the universities on the CSU’s list have research databases set up where students can go and search for projects by subject or professor. If they find something they like, it just takes an e-mail or phone call to the project coordinator to get involved. This kind of program would bring faculty and students together and make Sac State truly “one of the nation’s best higher education values.”

For Sac State to live up to its $3,500 per year in student fees, it needs to offer students strong and diverse academic programs and enough course choices so students don’t have to compete for a seat or settle with a class they didn’t want to take. To live up to its self-purported image as “one of the best higher education values,” Sac State needs to offer something more; it needs to measure up in ways other than salary to “comparable institutions” such as Rutgers, Arizona State and Georgia State – academic and research powerhouses and some of the nation’s best higher education values.

Choquette Marrow can be reached [email protected]