Lesson on the Budget at CSUN : Education: During the first day of the fall term, students learn that state cuts mean classes filled to the limit and waiting lists.

Management 360 was anything but manageable Monday.

With all 38 classroom seats filled, and another 37 students clamoring to get in, instructor Naomi Berger Davidson had little direction to offer anxious students except for the same advice heard often on the Cal State Northridge campus during the first day of classes: “Sign the waiting list; write the governor.”

“Demand is higher than supply,” Berger Davidson said, summarizing the lesson being taught in just about every academic department at CSUN.

State budget troubles have prompted CSUN officials to cut more than 300 classes from the fall semester--in addition to 600 classes cut a year ago. The reductions have left the school’s 28,000 students with a maddening game of musical chairs, seeking seats in courses that have shrunk in number during the past two years from more than 6,000 class sections to about 5,000.

“I’ve been kissing . . . all morning and it’s not working,” said 20-year-old English major Melanie Killedjian. By noon, she had only gotten one class--in astronomy. Others were luckier, but most students interviewed said they were having trouble filling out their schedules.

“If you’re asking, ‘Did I get all the classes I wanted?’ The answer is ‘no,’ ” said Leslie Brown, 28, a senior art major. “I did get all the classes I needed but I was on the phone for two days.”

Easing the pressure a bit was a decision last week by campus officials to restore 164 classes to the fall schedule, although students and faculty said they are hoping for more.

Donald Bianchi, CSUN’s vice president for academic affairs, said the latest class additions are “probably going to be about it.” He is the ranking academic administrator on campus until incoming President Blenda J. Wilson begins work next week.

The classes were added as a result of anticipated salary savings from the departure of between 80 and 100 CSUN professors who are expected to take advantage of an early retirement incentive plan approved this summer by the Legislature. That has prompted CSUN officials to rehire about 100 of the 500 or so lower-paid, part-time instructors who had been laid off.

CSUN and the other 19 campuses of the California State University system now are bracing for a budget cut of about 8.8%, according to the latest word from lawmakers in Sacramento. That translates into about $800,000 less for CSUN academic departments than the 8% budget cut that had been anticipated, Bianchi said.

Still, that is better than the 11% cut Gov. Pete Wilson had proposed in August, Bianchi said.

About 75 to 100 faculty members and students staged a brief rally on the CSUN campus to protest the expected cuts to higher education, as well as the failure of the Legislature and the governor to agree on a 1992-93 budget more than two months past their July 1 deadline.

“Politics is not just for dorks like me,” CSUN Associated Student President Sal Damji, an engineering major, said at the rally. “It’s time we take control of our future and one way to do that is to vote.”

But Damji’s message was heard by only a small portion of the Northridge student body, which has maintained a low profile in the years since the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s.

Students said they blame elected officials rather than school officials for their troubles in getting classes.

“The governor should be walking through these halls,” said David Pfenning, 28, a senior accounting major.

He and classmate Mike Fichera were standing in one of the many lines that snaked through hallways Monday. They were signing the waiting list for a required upper-division accounting class.

“There are at least as many enrolled as there are students on the waiting list,” said Fichera.

In the biology department, transfer student Glen Sahagun, 22, said he started the day hoping to enroll in genetics or some other upper-division course. But by noon, he could only find seats in a family health class and another in environmental science, neither of which he wanted.

“I’m not interested in those classes but I have to be enrolled in something or I won’t be able to stay registered at the school,” Sahagun said. “I want to pursue a career in medicine but right now it seems like it’s going to take forever to get anywhere.”

Student demand is especially high for general education courses required for graduation.

In the English department, for example, the number of freshman composition courses fell from 36 last fall to 24 this semester, department chairman Bill Walsh said. Remedial reading and writing courses have dropped from about 50 last fall to about 25 now.

Rooting for the students are faculty and administrators, such as Management Department Chairman Gerard Rossy.

“Because if students give up, if they figure it’s not worth it, then the cuts are going to have an even more dramatic implication for this state,” Rossy said, predicting a plunge into a “Third World economy” unless education receives a greater share of state funds.