By Nanette Asimov,Higher Education Reporter Updated Jan 24, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)
Officials at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park announced they will make major cuts to academic programs, faculty, staff and sports due to a $24 million budget deficit amid declining enrollment.Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle
Sonoma State University announced Wednesday that it will take extraordinary steps to close a crushing $24 million budget hole by eliminating six academic departments, ending nearly two dozen degree programs, canceling Division II athletics and laying off more than 60 faculty and staff — including tenured professors.
The cuts will happen in the fall, the university said. Students will no longer be able to earn a bachelor’s degree in 15 subjects — including physics, environmental sciences and French — or a master’s degree in six areas, including English, Spanish or history.
The university won’t renew the contracts of 46 tenured professors and adjunct faculty, and said it will eliminate 12 staff jobs, four management positions and “several more” lecturers. Sonoma State has 11 varsity athletic teams, including baseball, basketball, golf and soccer. None will return next fall.
“I know this is difficult news,” interim President Emily Cutrer said in a statement. “I understand that no amount of explanation or necessity makes any of us feel better.”
Math Professor Elaine Newman, president of the Sonoma State chapter of the California Faculty Association, called the cuts “capricious and arbitrary.”
“The future of the whole university is threatened by the cuts,” Newman said, calling on state lawmakers and the leaders of the California State University system to “bail out Sonoma State.”
Mildred Garcia, chancellor of the 23-campus California State University system, described the cuts at the Rohnert Park campus as a “plan for achieving long-term financial stability” and said CSU supports them.
In fact, it is CSU’s policy to reduce financial allocations to campuses that fail to meet enrollment targets. Sonoma State is one of eight CSU campuses that missed enrollment targets and will see its allocation from CSU’s central office reduced as a result.
In the Bay Area, the others include Cal State East Bay, Cal Maritime and San Francisco State.
Last month, San Francisco State President Lynn Mahoney declared a fiscal emergency at her campus, which has lost 25% of undergraduates in the past five years alone.
Sonoma State has seen enrollment drop 38% since 2015, Cutrer said in announcing the cuts.
Cutrer said the projected $23.9 million budget deficit is nearly 14% higher than the $21 million projected just three months ago. She said Sonoma State has had a budget deficit “for several years” and blamed it largely on the enrollment problem.
One explanation for the decline in students, which colleges across the country are experiencing, is that there are simply fewer 18-year-olds. The National Student Clearinghouse reported in October that colleges nationwide have seen a 5% drop since last fall, largely for this reason.
But campus leaders in California have also said that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s college students have shown far less interest in traveling away from home to attend school. As a result, campuses like Sonoma State and San Francisco State, where the cost of living can make it difficult to find student housing, see more of a drop than other campuses.
Mahoney of San Francisco State has also pointed to the city’s bad press, which has been amplified and even distorted in some media outlets.
While students from nearby Daly City are still enrolling at San Francisco State, Mahoney told the Chronicle in December, “others who are watching Fox News and hearing, ‘no, you’ll die’” in San Francisco, are not.
Cutrer, who became Sonoma State’s interim president in May after President Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee stepped down, sounded a hopeful note as she concluded her discouraging statement.
The cuts, which Cutrer called “changes,” “will help us ensure long-term fiscal stability,” and will help the campus “meet the changing needs of future generations of students,” she said.
Reach Nanette Asimov: nasimov@sfchronicle.com; Threads: @NanetteAsimov
Jan 22, 2025|Updated Jan 24, 2025 12:51 p.m.
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER
Nanette covers California’s public universities – the University of California and California State University – as well as community colleges and private universities. She’s written about sexual misconduct at UC and Stanford, the precarious state of accreditation at City College of San Francisco, and what happens when the UC Berkeley student government discovers a gay rights opponent in its midst. She has exposed a private art college where students rack up massive levels of debt (one student’s topped $400k), and covered audits peering into UC finances, education lawsuits and countless student protests.
But writing about higher education also means getting a look at the brainy creations of students and faculty: Robotic suits that help paralyzed people walk. Online collections of folk songs going back hundreds of years. And innovations touching on everything from virtual reality to baseball.
Nanette is also covering the COVID-19 pandemic and served as health editor during the first six months of the crisis, which quickly ended her brief tenure as interim investigations editor.
Previously, Nanette covered K-12 education. Her stories led to changes in charter school laws, prompted a ban on Scientology in California public schools, and exposed cheating and censorship in testing.
A past president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, Nanette has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in sociology from Queens College. She speaks English and Spanish.
