On Thursday, September 12, 2019, Professor Howard Bunsis, accounting professor at Eastern Michigan University, presented the Bunsis Report 2019 about Cal State Los Angeles’s finances. CFA-LA initially planned to invite Bunsis to campus in Spring 2019 soon after Cal State LA administrators floated the idea of declaring “impaction” (exclusion). However, due to scheduling issues, we decided to move his visit to the Fall 2019 semester. Needless to say, his presentation provided us with numerous important findings which counter the neoliberal narrative put forward by campus administrators.

Bunsis’ main conclusions are:

In this post, we intend to focus on two of his main conclusions: #1 and #2. Administrators justified their declaration of impaction on the faulty premise that the campus faced a $30 million budget shortfall due to “over-enrollment.” By choosing to push the narrative of neoliberal austerity, they were able to implement a new admissions policy that has already begun to cut off access to hundreds of previously qualified students. However, Bunsis’ report makes it plain that the impaction rationale put forward by administrators of there being a “budget shortfall” is unsubstantiated.

As is evidenced above, Bunsis found that Cal State LA holds over $131 million in “unrestricted” reserves. These reserves are derived from three primary sources: state allocations (CA tax dollars), grants and contracts, and student tuition. However, he also notes that in June 2019, the California State Auditor (who disclosed the CSU’s “hidden” $1.5 billion budget) found that Cal State LA had a $191,673,526 budget surplus. Whichever number is accurate (Bunsis’ or the CA State Auditor’s), it’s clear that the campus has a large surplus of funds which should have been used for educating our students.

The surplus reserve held directly by Cal State LA is different from the unrestricted reserves kept by the California State University’s Chancellor. While many of us were shocked to learn about the $1.5 billion the CSU has in undisclosed accounts, Bunsis argues that unrestricted reserves are actually over $2.7 billion!

We feel it is important to ask why none of this money was earmarked to Cal State LA (and other campuses in need) to cover the supposed budget shortfall? While the CSU suggests there’s nothing nefarious going on, we believe it’s vital to demand greater transparency and a full accounting of CSU’s and Cal State LA’s finances. Moreover, these funds should be used for direct instruction of students currently in the system.

There are several other important issues raised in Bunsis’ report, which we will be analyzing and disseminating in other posts. We also intend to use his findings for our SOS Campaign and the upcoming bargaining campaign. In the meantime, our main objective here is to challenge the narrative being articulated by Cal State LA administrators that there was no alternative but to declare impaction. As the Bunsis Report states, “The justifications reported by the Provost for impaction are not supported by the empirical evidence, as revenues from the state and tuition have been very solid.”