San Francisco State University has been preparing for a budget cut in the 2025-26 fiscal year by cutting sports teams, combining classes, having faculty teach outside of their departments and firing lecturers.

It was reported in the 2024 University Budget Committee meeting that the campus has a $13.9 million structural deficit that needs to be accounted for and a 5% reduction per the California State University relocation plan, resulting in an even larger deficit. 

The ongoing financial crisis has led to reduced funding and fewer lecturer faculty members.

Brad Erickson, a lecturer faculty member and the California Faculty Association chapter president, said 615 lecturer faculty members were let go in the past two years. With a smaller faculty and fewer classes offered, it’s much harder for students to enroll in the elective courses required to graduate. 

SFSU President Lynn Mahoney appeared at the University Budget Committee’s monthly meeting on Oct. 23, where she warned faculty that due to the deficit the university is facing and a 9.8% decline in first-year enrollment, the university will have to make further cuts to programs that no longer attract students.

The majority of the layoffs affected lecturers, who teach a majority of the undergraduate classes. Those budget cuts, implemented for the Fall 2025 semester, involved reducing the number of part-time professors and decreasing the number of classes to prepare for a “financial emergency,” according to Mahoney. The College of Liberal and Creative Arts has been experiencing the cuts for several semesters and is bracing for more. 

Zoe Thompson, an English education student, organized a group with other undergraduate English students to petition to save the English department. Some classes have been reduced to half of what their enrollment was three years ago, with others cut entirely. 

“We’ve lost a ton of English classes,” Thompson said. “Are we running out of money? The CSU reserve would indicate that is not the case. In 2022, they had $8 billion in total reserves. Point is, it’s not going towards our education clearly.” 

The university can use reserves to cover funding shortfalls and avoid cutting programs. As of June 30, 2024, the California State University system had $8 billion in reserves, but more than $7 billion of that is restricted or designated for specific purposes. 

Ryan Storm, a former assistant vice chancellor for CSU’s budget and planning advocacy, shared his views on why reserve funds are hardly touched. 

“Reserve funds are one-time monies. They are akin to receiving money back from the government after filing a tax return or a one-time gift of money from a family member,” Storm said in an interview with Golden Gate Xpress in April. “That one-time money would quickly dry up.”

Reserve funds won’t be used to save programs since the money allocated to keeping a program, its classes and faculty, would only push back the program’s cut to the future.

For LCA students, the current round of cuts meant pressure was already high when planning for future classes. Isabelle Sanchez, a visual communications design student, said she’s only able to take three classes a semester. Other courses are still on the waitlist because they fill up quickly and the number of seats and classes offered is limited. 

“I’m a fifth-year now and I’m still waitlisted,” Sanchez said. “Everyone is fighting to get into design electives. I’m second and tenth on a waitlist for design electives and know I’m not going to get in.”

With elective classes being cut, Sanchez and other students can take electives that aren’t specific to their major by petitioning the board of their department to have those courses fulfilled as a major elective after completion. While they’re fulfilling a requirement, students aren’t necessarily taking the classes they want for their major.

“They cut classes and then tell us that we can take a marketing class instead,” Sanchez said. “You have to take extra steps to have that class marked as an elective.”

In the Bachelor of Science in Apparel Design and Merchandising program, faculty members were having difficulty navigating classes amid the cuts and helping their students plan for their futures at SFSU once they were no longer there. 

Among the many lecturers who were cut is Durojaiye Salaam, a former professor in the apparel design program. He said that professors in the design department had an idea of what was coming, given the news circulating about both CSU budget cuts and the financial crisis that SFSU was undergoing, but weren’t entirely sure until the announcement was made. 

“The department head told me ahead of time what was going on, and that he’d know more information in the future,” Salaam said. “But essentially, with budget cuts, they were letting all the lecturers go. You can’t really run that department without lecturers, so that work will increase with all the professors that are actually there.” 

Salaam was teaching a user experience design class that kept changing as new information came in. The class helped students understand how users interact with products and how to make them appealing to consumers. 

“It kind of sucks if they don’t really know design in that way, it’s really just going to be regurgitating whatever it is that’s being taught,” Salaam said. 

Natalie Lara, a former interior design and architecture student who graduated in Spring 2025, said she was unaware whether she’d have to stay another semester.

“It was brought up to us that classes were all over the place,” Lara said. “There was a high chance that I was going to have to stay another year, because they only offered some classes every two to three years. I had old credits in high school that I used to fill credits.”

Ashley Nguyen, an apparel design student, also had a similar experience with choosing classes. Her method has been to take whatever is available and hope for the best. 

“The classes you need aren’t always available,” Nguyen said. “They’re only offered during certain semesters, and then the electives are listed as classes but no longer exist.” 

Nguyen’s biology professor was also affected by cuts. And the way her professor was informed wasn’t so formal.

“My biology professor was laid off. They didn’t actually tell her officially, just didn’t schedule her for any classes,” Nguyen said.

As SFSU is restructuring, students and faculty are left wondering what the university’s future will look like in the coming years.