Give Blood, Get Cash, Teach Students
The state of inequality in America's "Higher Education" system is possibly best illustrated by how colleges and universities treat adjunct faculty. This article in the Guardian describes the plight of faculty who are so poorly paid that they sometimes end up donating plasma in order to survive.
From the article, more and more poorly paid lecturers across the US end up "homeless, living in their cars, getting their meals from their university’s food bank, taking extra jobs to support their families, even donating plasma." The article also makes the point that, because adjuncts are so poorly paid, they must teach many extra classes simply to make money. This means that the students, whose tuition and fees continue to rise, are increasingly likely to have been taught by poorly paid adjuncts.
Executive Salaries Increased
How does this play out at the CSU? About how you would expect.
https://gawker.com/your-broke-adjunct-professors-would-like-a-little-solid-1774224954
At the CSU, lecturers get starvation wages and heavy workloads, while the executives raise their own salaries, get free housing, and drive company cars.
https://csulauniversitytimes.com/10623/news/executive-salaries-increased/
These quotes form the article say it all:
In [2016] "the trustees voted 11-7 to raise tuition on students, while knowing that 20% of CSU students are food insecure and 10% are homeless.” - Molly Talcott, Los Angeles Chapter President of CFA and Associate Professor of Sociology
"If I were a CSU executive, I also wouldn’t take a penny more while lecturer faculty are barely scraping by, with some living in their cars." - Molly Talcott.
And instead of hearing these concerns, "There’s been times where we’ve caught [the CSU Board of Trustees] on their Facebook, playing video games on their computer, sometimes even just sleeping during a Board of Trustees meeting.” - Daniel Osoy, Master’s of Interdisciplinary Studies student and CFA Office Manager
The last one is particularly troubling. The board cared so little for these people, they couldn't even be bothered to listen to a presentation.