California’s higher education institutions are falling apart. Fresno State can be helped | Opinion

The state of higher education in California is falling apart.

Not the instruction going on in the thousands of classrooms and labs in the California State University and University of California systems.

Rather, it is the actual classroom and lab buildings themselves, along with other necessary infrastructure like water and sewer systems, that are badly outdated or in need of repair.

That is the conclusion of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, the branch that advises the Assembly and Senate on California’s top issues.

The problem is humongous.

The LAO says that the CSU has a current backlog of needed repairs amounting to $6.5 billion. Over the next decade, the CSU will need another $3.1 billion to make necessary repairs and upgrades.

Fresno State has a backlog right now of $500 million in deferred maintenance.

It’s even worse for the UC, where the backlog is $7.3 billion and the need for the next 10 years stands at $12 billion.

The LAO noted that some campuses in the systems devote little spending on building repairs. The Legislature has contributed to the problem with inconsistent funding for fixes. Both the CSU and UC also want to expand learning opportunities, which means more classrooms and labs. But there is no thought for how to maintain those potential facilities.

“Absent a plan to address these issues, backlogs very likely will continue to grow — leading to higher costs and greater risk of programmatic disruptions,” the LAO report says.

Fresno State’s dilemma

The problems at Fresno State became a focus this past fall during the campaign for Measure E, a proposed sales tax hike that would have generated new money for improvements.

In one example, Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval outlined how the university is restricted in the number of students it can accept into its nursing program due to limitations caused by old facilities, such as lab space. More than 350 students applied for entry into nursing last fall, and of them 112 had 4.0 grade point averages. The university could only accept 60 students.

Fresno State’s agriculture, engineering and other STEM disciplines face similar challenges with old or outdated infrastructure.

Measure E was on the fall ballot as a way to raise $36 million a year for 20 years. It was proposed as a two-tenths-of-a-cent tax on all sales in Fresno County. Two-thirds of the funding would have been devoted to academic programs. The other third would have gone to athletics.

The measure needed a 50% plus one vote to succeed. In the final tally, Measure E received 47.1% of the votes, coming up short by about 12,000 votes.

Future funding

Following the November election, Jiménez-Sandoval told Bee reporter Robert Kuwada that he hopes another attempt at something like Measure E will be undertaken in the 2024 election year.

That becomes particularly relevant if Fresno State attempts to join one of the Power 5 conferences, as the Fresno City Council and Mayor Jerry Dyer have encouraged. Power 5 refers to the biggest sports conferences in college athletics, such as the Big 12 or Pac-12. One of the sports facilities most in need of renovations is Valley Children’s Stadium.

The LAO also recommends that individual universities also provide money for the capital projects. Local sales taxes could work in that way.

The condition of Fresno State’s facilities is rated poor in the LAO report. It takes money to make things better.

As Jiménez-Sandoval pointed out to Kuwada, both continued state funding plus local help like a Measure E are needed. The state legislators representing Fresno — Assemblymembers Jim Patterson and Joaquin Arambula and Sens. Anna Caballero and Shannon Grove — need to make this a priority.

In the same way, local voters should back the next attempt at a sales-tax measure to benefit Fresno State. Improvements to the university benefit the region, and really, the state, with top-notch graduates in fields like nursing.