Proposed program cuts raise deeper questions about the future of CSUDH.
CSUDH is going through an identity crisis. As campus amenities expand, the academic catalog shrinks. What is a university that considers cutting its philosophy program yet maintains a partnership with ChatGPT?
I first realized this the other day when I was walking by the SBS building and noticed the construction happening nearby. I watched crew members in the basket of a cherry picker fasten a metal plate to the outside of the upcoming Health, Wellness & Recreation Center.
The $85 million, 83,000 square-foot facility is slated to open next fall, giving students access to basketball courts, dance studios, and even a rock climbing wall. The one thing it won’t give students is a degree in labor studies or conflict resolution—two of six academic programs possibly on the chopping block due to the system-wide budget issues affecting CSUDH.
Fifty-five percent of Toros are first-generation students who come from working-class communities where labor exploitation is not necessarily uncommon. When entering the workforce after graduation, most Toros would benefit more from understanding their rights as employees and how to negotiate with employers than from reminiscing about a beautiful campus.
To outsiders, CSUDH may be considered the “kid sister” of Cal State Northridge or Long Beach. But to Toros, the university is a pasture where students graze on knowledge and opportunity.
That grass, it seems, is starting to get real short. The six programs CSUDH may discontinue were selected based on several factors, administrators say, including community impact and labor market demand. Ethnic studies programs like Chicana & Chicano Studies, which Huron Consulting ranked low in its analysis of the university, were spared from consideration—for now.
Not to compare apples to oranges, but it’s interesting to me that CSUDH may discontinue its labor studies program while a school like UCLA launched a full academic department just this year.
As the university navigates budgetary restraints and figures out how to steady itself fiscally, its identity is slipping.
CSUDH was a product of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It would be hard for the campus to continue that legacy and keep it as part of the Toro identity while getting rid of fields of study that were pivotal in the university’s origins.
The majority of students enrolled at CSUDH come from lower-income backgrounds and traditionally marginalized communities. How does CSUDH expect to serve these students without offering the programs that help them to better understand the socioeconomic and political circumstances that shaped their communities?
Is catering to the job market the purpose of a university, or is its purpose to nurture the minds of its pupils so they gain the tools to shape their own place in the market?
In addition to the aforementioned Recreation Center, CSUDH is currently in the process of developing new dining and residence halls, as well as an Orthotics & Prosthetics Center. Those projects will no doubt bring benefits to the campus community, but I’m unsure whether they will be enough to help CSUDH recover the activity and enrollment seen prior to the pandemic.
CSUDH is becoming something new—what that is, exactly, I don’t know. The problem is, I don’t think many university administrators know either. With many Toros too busy with school, work, and just life in general, they also won’t have the time to consider what the campus should be.
CSUDH has always stood for opportunity, but that legacy becomes harder to uphold when programs rooted in justice, inquiry, and community empowerment face elimination. If the university wants to preserve its identity, it must protect the disciplines that shaped it.
Cutting programs like Philosophy may become more than a budget decision; that may become the clearest sign that CSUDH is losing sight of its own reason for being.