Managers keep growing. Faculty don’t.

Management headcount peaked at 4,815 in fall 2024, 12.9% above 2018, while faculty were up just 1.4%. When budgets tightened in 2025, both groups shrank, but faculty fell faster: down 3.6% in one year against 2.2% for managers. The result is the lowest faculty-to-manager ratio in the series.

Tenure-line faculty did not grow at all between 2019 and 2024. There were 11,132 in fall 2019 and 11,135 in fall 2024.

Executives and managers were 7.6% of CSU employees in fall 2024 but drew 16.5% of salary spending, more than twice their share of the workforce. In fall 2020 the figures were 8.0% of employees and 16.0% of salary, so management’s share of pay has edged up as its share of headcount edged down.

Faculty represented by the California Faculty Association were 45.6% of employees and 49.7% of salary spending. Part of the gap between the two groups reflects the many part-time lecturers in the faculty count, so these shares compare spending, not individual pay.

The trend at the top continues. In November 2025 the trustees adopted an executive compensation policy that removed salary caps for the chancellor, vice chancellors, and presidents and added performance bonuses, and in January 2026 they approved raises of 4% to 17% for four vice chancellors.

The auditor found that management grew faster than every other group, including executives and nonfaculty staff. By 2015–16, managers held 7.5% of CSU positions but 14.2% of total compensation.

The audit also found that campuses frequently could not justify how many managers they hired. Neither the Chancellor’s Office nor the campuses required a staffing analysis before adding management positions, and the auditor recommended that they adopt one.

The two periods use different measures. The auditor counted full-time-equivalent positions from state payroll; the CSU Employee Profiles count people. They are shown side by side, not joined into one trend line. Full-time-equivalent counts for 2016 onward, by employee group, would allow a single comparable series and are a good public records request.

The auditor’s 2017 recommendation was simple: require a written justification, with a staffing analysis, for each new management position. Three questions follow from the data on this page.

Has the CSU adopted that policy? If so, the justifications should be available on request, as the auditor recommended.

Why did management grow 10% while faculty shrank? The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that CSU enrollment in 2025–26 is nearly back to its 2020–21 peak, which was above 2018 levels. Students are taught by faculty.

How will new executive pay be funded? The 2025 policy says bonuses and deferred compensation come from non-state, non-tuition funds. A public accounting of those funds would let the board show it.

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