After a record number of Cal State Fullerton programs applied for the same slice of pie, legacy recipients such as the Daily Titan and campus theater are seeing their funding from student fees cut by roughly half for the next academic year.
Read more Irvine City Council wants plans from staff on handling a budget gap before it grows
The Instructionally Related Activities program, or commonly referred to as IRA, is funded through a tuition fee charged to students each semester, which will be $49.12, to support learning activities and laboratory experiences outside the classroom, including student media, the arts, study abroad programs and athletics. It is described by CSUF officials as “integral to the university’s formal instructional offerings.”
In 2022-23, 93 campus groups shared $2.4 million, and in 2023-24 about $2.8 was spread between 91 groups.
But then Cal State Fullerton was required under CSU guidelines to spend down the entire $6 million student fee reserve amassed during the pandemic, campus administration said.
For next year, the pot is back down to $2.5 million, but the number of campus groups asking for money is 113.
“It’s very destabilizing. It kind of threw us all into panic overnight because we just got these letters,” Josh Grisetti, a CSUF associate professor of musical theatre, said of the notification recently received that the Department of Theatre & Dance within the College of the Arts will be “experiencing unilateral cuts of 50%-70% to all IRA-funded programming.”
“Now we’re going to be dealing with production budgets that are smaller than high school production budgets at a university level,” Grisetti said, adding that production rights for the coming season had already been licensed before the March funding letters arrived, leaving the department committed to shows it could no longer afford to mount. “That’s a pretty sad, embarrassing turn of events.”
Grisetti, who is in his fifth year at CSUF, said the theater and dance department had not faced major funding problems during his time at the university until this year. He called the cuts “brutal.”
Funding is determined by the IRA Committee, which decides which programs are eligible and how much is awarded. According to the university, a larger IRA reserve was accrued over the pandemic due to closures and reduced in-person activities, leaving CSUF with a balance it was required to spend under the broader CSU policy.
Under a 2010 student referendum, the athletics department automatically receives 36% of the total IRA fee revenue. For the 2026-27 year, that is nearly $1.4 million. Another $421,000 is set aside for university costs of administering the program.
Read more CBP arrests 27 cruise line workers in San Diego as part of child sexual exploitation investigation
Daily Titan Editor in Chief Jayden Lovelady said student journalists learned their budget was collapsing only weeks before the end of the spring semester, leaving the campus newspaper facing a $40,000 deficit despite a national award run that recently placed the paper among the top student publications in the country.
The program had been awarded $119,900 for at least the last three years before the roughly 50% reduction for 2026-27, which left it with $59,055.
OC News, the student television newscast, had its IRA allocation dropped from $30,000 to $19,800.
“It does concern me that our university wouldn’t invest in Daily Titan and OC News specifically, like they do athletics,” said Lovelady.
“And I don’t disagree with that,” she said of the support for the athletic teams. “I totally think that makes sense. It’s more so, if you’re protecting that because it’s an integral part of our campus identity, why would the Daily Titan not be included in that?”
In response to the sudden cuts, roughly 200 students and faculty attended an April 23 Academic Senate meeting to challenge the funding decisions, Lovelady said.
Following the Senate meeting, the university announced that campus partners from Academic Affairs, the Academic Senate and Associated Students Inc. had formed a task force “to review IRA funding matters and develop recommendations for a more sustainable approach.”
CSUF said that work will begin “immediately.” But it is happening after the budget for the current year was set.
University officials said in a statement they shared concerns expressed by faculty and student leaders over the fast-rising demand for program support from IRA funding, which they said “has far outpaced the incremental growth of the fee-supported fund.”