In the face of crippling budget cuts, some faculty and staff at CSU Fullerton have questioned whether the university should continue to run its Irvine branch campus when the college's lease expires in 2011.
The student-run newspaper, the Daily Titan, reports that a campus task force has reasoned that the satellite campus is a revenue-generator and should survive.
Wikimedia Commons photo by Vercillo
CSU Fullerton's Irvine branch campus sprang up in 2002 on the old El Toro Marine base as a small campus extension with big dreams.
The LA Times reported that officials envisioned a "sprawling satellite merging education and recreation" that could – just maybe – even become a new state university.
But in spring 2009, the property's owner, Lennar Corp., decided it wanted to end the lease with CSU Fullerton in favor of private development. The timing coincided with the statewide budget crisis that had leveled devastating cuts on the CSU system: furloughs for employees, cuts in student enrollment and diminished course offerings.
Even after Lennar agreed to extend the lease temporarily until 2011, some faculty and staff questioned the wisdom of maintaining a satellite campus when the main campus itself was starved for funds.
In spring 2009, some 56 percent of full-time faculty electorate agreed to a statement posed by the academic senate that stated: We cannot afford increased costs to operate our Irvine campus while our budgets are being cut.
At an open hearing last fall, several faculty members spoke on all sides of the issue, including a few who were highly skeptical about the benefits of the Irvine campus.
Justin Tucker, assistant professor in the department of political science e-mailed his comments for the hearing, saying that diverting resources to the satellite was "demoralizing and a poor use of resources":
"We have been told that classes offered at Irvine are protected regardless of enrollment numbers, while our classes at the main campus require a higher number of students to prevent them from being cancelled. Thus, classes of less than 10 students continue to be offered at Irvine while the same class at the main campus typically is pushed beyond 45 students by the administration."
The university's Planning, Resources and Budgeting Committee came out in favor of preserving the Irvine campus, saying the short-term savings of closing the satellite would pale in comparison to the long-term consequences of such a move. Namely, the university would tarnish its reputation and lose an opportunity to grow in south Orange County in the future.
Campus officials put together a task force of faculty, staff and administrators to study the fiscal implications of an Irvine campus.
In the end, the task force argued for continuing to operate an Irvine campus, in part because revenues at the satellite exceed its expenditures by about $6 million – money that the report says benefits the main Fullerton campus. It's still unclear what the university will do with the Irvine campus when the Lennar lease expires.
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