Cal State San Bernardino faculty members are calling out administrators for what they say is a misuse of funds, after a Thursday, Oct. 23, public meeting at which officials said the university faces a nearly $13 million decrease in its 2025-26 budget.
The San Bernardino chapter of the California Faculty Association, the union representing faculty and staff in the Cal State system, plans to file complaints against the university “to fight program elimination and job loss, stop excessive workload and make sure faculty get the work (to which) they’re entitled,” chapter Vice President Thomas Corrigan said in a Thursday, Oct. 23, email.
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Throughout the presentation, faculty members held up giant note cards questioning several controversies that have hit the school recently, from the end of a lawsuit that alleged gender discrimination to an August report that said university housing was deeply in debt.
Corrigan, a faculty member in Cal State San Bernardino’s Department of Communication and Media, said the system has been short changing students. A March report found that Cal State San Bernardino has cut expenditures for instruction while increasing funding for executive staff and new buildings, he said.
“But at CSUSB, we don’t just have a financial priorities crisis,” Corrigan said. “We also have a financial mismanagement crisis.”
During the open forum, Cal State San Bernardino President Tomas Morales, who in August announced he’d step down at the end of this school year, said the campus is “experiencing a decline in state funding and tuition revenue challenges.”
Morales added that the university was committed to resource management.
Samuel Sudhakar, chief financial officer and vice president for the division of finance, technology and operations for the university, said that in the 2024-25 fiscal year, 74% of the budget went toward faculty and staff, salaries and benefits. He said the second-largest cost was financial aid for students at $43 million, or 14%.
The budget for the previous year was $293 million, with a projected deficit of $20.4 million, which he said the university was able to address through across-the-board cuts.
The university is facing a $12.9 million deficit, Sudhakar said. The Cal State system, he said, expects cuts at the state level and the university is looking to deal with the effects of those reductions.
The university is increasing class sizes, canceling classes that have fewer than a certain amount of students enrolled, reducing tenured positions, and using other strategic options to lower costs and potentially gain revenue, Sudhakar said.
Cal State San Bernardino spokesperson Alan Llavore said campus officials would not comment regarding the budget or the union’s allegations beyond what administrators said during the forum. He pointed to to the university’s financial transparency website, which lays out the budget for the next year and the deficit.
An 2025 audit from the CSU chancellor’s office released in August found that Cal State San Bernardino’s student housing department is in debt, with up to $18.5 million of the budget put on other parts of the university and that the administration borrowed $10 million from the Student Union. In that same month, the university halted a masters of science physician assistant program after it failed to gain accreditation.
“Faculty members said the administration misrepresented staff as faculty in accreditation filings and demonstrated a quote, ‘poor understanding of accreditation standards, misplaced priorities and a persistent lack of integrity and transparency,’” Corrigan said during a union news conference after the forum.
During the forum, Morales said the program was funded by outside dollars and was designed to be self sustaining.
“And so there were no resources taken from the operating budget,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate, and very disappointed that we did not receive accreditation … But we continue to be committed to addressing the health disparity in the United States.”
Earlier this week, the university lost a court case when a Los Angeles jury awarded $6 million to a former administrator for the university, Anissa Rodgers, in a gender discrimination suit filed against the Cal State Chancellor’s Office, Morales and former dean of the university’s Palm Desert campus, Jake Zhu.
Corrigan said administrators have raised class sizes and put a minimum on how many students are required to allow a course to run.
The move impacts already-crowded classes, increases faculty workload, affects student learning and canceled smaller courses — hurting the ability of some students to graduate on time, Corrigan said.
Tiffany Jones, president of the San Bernardino chapter of California Faculty Association said during the news conference, that forum attendees were directed to write questions on note cards to be read aloud by a moderator — a change from last year when speakers could directly ask questions.
“The administration’s explanations about the budget are basically a façade,” Jones said. “They present the so-called budget as if they were transparent and benevolent, but what they’re actually doing is weaponizing ideas of austerity and scarcity to justify inequity, job losses, increased faculty work, increased faculty workload, and as a way to simply rob our students of quality education.”
The budgetary advisory council meets in summer to make decisions, Jones said, but most faculty are not on campus then.
She alleged that the university funnels money for teaching into capital projects at the cost of programs and takes on loans that exacerbate the issue and keep departments in a constant state of having to justify their needs while increasing student debt and putting pressure on faculty.
Corrie Roozee, a 24-year lecturer in Cal State San Bernardino’s Department of Geography, said she was feeling the effects of financial mismanagement.
When officials were asked during the forum how many lecturers — those primarily focused on teaching and hired on a temporary or part-time basis — have been let go, Vice President for Academic Affairs Rafik Mohammed said administrators did not have the exact number.
“Nobody in admin knows why,” Roozee said. “Because lecturers are not even second-class citizens. We are just exploited and forgotten and disposable.”
A couple of years ago, her department had seven lecturers and now has two, Roozee said.
“I would love to have CSU admin that respected faculty and students as much as they do big, shiny buildings,” Roozee said. “I don’t know why that’s unreasonable.”
