CSU Faculty Say Students Need More Counselors. Will The New Bargaining Agreement Help?

Maria Gisela Sanchez Cobo, a temporary counselor at Cal Poly Pomona, was one of the California State University faculty members who went on strike Monday, after months of contract negotiations broke down.

According to Sanchez Cobo, 13 clinicians serve a student population of around 29,000 at Cal Poly Pomona. She said that many of this generation’s college students often come looking to talk about issues related to suicide, “and in my campus it's no different, so we barely make it.”

To her, the need for more mental health professionals “to serve the growing mental health needs of our students” was a “very strong issue.” It would also represent a win for one of the union’s smallest contingents — there are less than 300 counselors in the California Faculty Association.

In the tentative agreement reached Monday evening between CSU and the union that represents its 29,000 professors, lecturers, coaches, librarians, and counselors, the university system agreed — in aspirational language, more so than with a concrete deliverable — to hire more faculty to address mental health issues.

The union had asked for an adherence to the ratio recommended by the International Association of Counseling Services: one counselor for every 1,000-1,500 students. And in the tentative agreement, the CSU system agreed to that ratio, although a timeline was not set.

A spokesperson for CSU said details on the tentative agreement will be provided in the coming days.

A ratio out of balance

Kevin Wehr, a professor of psychology at CSU Sacramento and head of bargaining for the California Faculty Association, said about a third of campuses within the CSU umbrella meet the recommended ratio. Some campuses, however, have as many as 3,000 students to one counselor, he said.

Wehr said campuses have a “mental health crisis” that dates back a decade, and that the 2016 presidential election, the national racial reckoning in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic made the problem worse.

“We have not seen management respond with enough resources. There has been some hiring, there's not nearly enough,” he said. “And for years now, we have been calling for the CSU to meet the international accreditation standards agency recommended ratio of students to counselors.”

Wehr said the gains will help as the demands of mental health counselors on campuses have been “skyrocketing.”

“It's a huge win to get that ratio in our contract. I do want to be clear, it's aspirational language, it's not a defensible right,” he said. “So, if the campus doesn't meet the ratio, it's not like the union could grieve.”

But, he said, with the ratio now in the agreement, bargaining is hopeful for more gains down the road.

Worry about burnout

Sanchez Cobo, the temporary counselor faculty at Cal Poly Pomona, said the current generation of students does not struggle with “taboos and barriers to access services as much,” but this can also create conflict.

“When you have not properly staffed a mental health team, it means that people in the office, people that is serving the students, are quickly getting burned out because the demands are higher than the supply,” she said. “You have greater numbers of the students versus how many providers you have to meet their needs.”

As part of the job, counselors also pick up a crisis shift, Sanchez Cobo said.

“When we have been really short on staff, we wouldn't have more than one person per shift,” she said. “That can be very, very hard.”

Yolanda Gamboa, a training coordinator for San Francisco State University’s counseling and psychological services, said by hiring more counselors and reducing the ratio, California State University will help meet the needs of the students.

“We don't get to see our students as often, so we see them like every other week or every three weeks or once a month and then typically at the end of the semester,” she said. “When all the students are asking to be seen, we end up developing long waiting lists — like this semester, we had almost a hundred students waiting to be served.”

Demand for job security

Striking counselors were also demanding that the California State University system hire more tenure-track positions. Sanchez Cobo, for example, is considered temporary counselor faculty because her 12-month contract has to be renewed every year.

Hiring tenure-track positions, she said, will indicate that management values “counselor faculty in the system and wanting to attract and retain good clinicians on campus.”

“I think as long as the positions continue to be on a temporary basis, it's going to be very hard for us to have solid teams, especially of professionals that want to learn, stay, and grow within the system about the specific needs of our students,” she said.

Gamboa is one of only three tenured counselor faculty left at SFSU. She said the lack of tenure-track positions at the universities means people do not see them as “a viable career for them because they don't know if in the next year, their contract is going to be renewed.”

By offering tenure-track positions, Gamboa said, students will be better served as someone would be willing “to dedicate their life's work to serving our students and really become familiar with the campus.”

Wehr said bargaining did not get language on hiring more tenure track counselors in the tentative agreement reached with CSU management, but is hopeful for the future: “[W]e will continue to try.”