I teach in the Writing Program at the University of California, Riverside. I've taught here since 1999, some of that time as a teaching assistant, and some of that time as a lecturer.
I probably won't be teaching at the University at the beginning of next year, however. This is not through any fault of my own, though. People with much, much more seniority than I have have been laid off, and I'm a lowly quarter-by-quarter part-time lecturer.
More below the flip.
I am currently teaching two sections of a course called "English 4", which is designed to satisfy the University of California's Entry-Level Writing Requirement ("ELWR"). Students who do not fulfill this requirement within their first three quarters of admission to the University of California are subject to dismissal.
However, the the University of California, Riverside has gutted the Writing Program. In fact, "the number of freshmen unable to enroll in the necessary classes will be at approximately 1,500 for this quarter, a number which threatens to jump to 2,000 in the event that the currently proposed budget is implemented (emphasis mine)." The University Writing Program is short $500,000 for the Winter Quarter, and short another $500,000 for the Spring Quarter. English 4, the course many of these students need to remain in the University at all, will not be offered in the Winter or Spring Quarters.
Even students who pass on to the regular composition sequence are going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to enroll in courses they need this year, and, unless things change, this will continue next year and the year following. Since there are going to be new freshmen in those years competing for the came courses, the number of students who need to take English courses will continue to grow because the University of California, Riverside is not going to offer enough classes to even come close to meeting demand.
This is particularly galling in light of the 32% tuition/fee increase at the University of California. Students are, quite literally, getting much less for much more, and it's shameful.
But, at the University of California, Riverside, it's even worse than that. Less than a month ago, the University announced the hiring of the new "founding dean of the medical school" and "vice chancellor of health affairs". According to the announcement, he is to start February 2010; the Medical School is scheduled to enroll its first students in the Fall of 2012. He will be making $525,000 per year with a $100,000 per bonus. I am sure he is an expert in his field and a wonderful man.
There's only one problem: the "Medical School" is vaporware. It has not been built yet. I bike by it every single day. It is half a concrete wall, and that went up just two weeks ago.
There is no building. There is no faculty. There are no students. He will be paid more than $1,250,000 before the first students are admitted into the Medical School. It is welfare for the rich.
Meanwhile, the students we do have are being asked to pay 32% more for classes they are required to take, but that are not being made available, and in some cases, facing dismissal by the end of the academic year if they do not pass classes that are not being offered.
If you do the math, you might realize that the $1,250,000 being paid for the dean of a program that does not exist and will not exist for more than two years would more than pay the $1,000,000 shortfall the University Writing Program is facing.
I look at my classes and I worry, because many of them are not ready and probably will not pass the committee-graded final at the end of the quarter. Many of them will be subject to dismissal, but I know that if they could retake the course, as many have in the past, they would most likely pass.
I worry that many of them will be dismissed, but there is very little I can do about it, because I am being dismissed, too.