Readers React: If CSU needs more money, why did it give executives a raise?

To the editor: A committee convened by the California State University system says it needs to raise student fees to expand enrollment and pay for needed technology and facility updates. (“Major changes, including higher tuition, may be on the way for Cal State system,” Oct. 28)

In July, The Times reported that after the Cal State system received $216.6 million more from taxpayers for enrolling a greater number of students, one of the first things the Board of Trustees did was to raise executive salaries.

To his credit, at the time Trustee Silas H. Abrego was reported by The Times to have “expressed concern that the pay hikes are one of the board’s first actions following a successful campaign to win $216.6 million in additional funding from the state — particularly because the system had argued for the money to enroll more students.”

But after all, students are only the next generation of leaders, and that doesn’t matter to today’s bottom line.

I guess executive salaries trump everything else in the educational system, just as they do in the corporate world.

Charles Christian, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: I paid $271 in tuition for my final term at Cal State Northridge in 1983. The first job I had out of college in my field paid $23,500 a year, almost 100 times my tuition.

My niece graduated from CSUN in 2011 and paid about $2,700 for her final term. Her first job out of school didn’t pay $270,000, which at 100 times tuition would have kept up with tuition inflation.

After all the added tax money California has reaped from the countless Cal State graduates working here, the idea that the state can’t give reliable funding to this university system isn’t just stupid, it’s fiscally stupid.

Kelley Willis, Venice

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To the editor: I love it: Cal State tuition hikes have been urged so the university system can reduce its reliance on state funding.

Wasn’t state funding the idea behind the California State University system?

Michael Grossman, San Dimas

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