Melissa Meek, Spring 2009 Features Editor
The state budget crisis has forced the California State University system to turn away an estimated 10,000 qualified students for the 2009-2010 academic year.
As a way to limit enrollment, CSU schools moved the application deadline to Nov. 30. The application deadline used to extend well into spring.
In the first month of accepting applications, the CSU system received more than 138,000, with nearly 33,000 of those from transfer students alone.
“(It makes me feel) a little nervous because I was planning on transferring next semester,” said music major Nick Chamian.
While qualified transfer students are required admission into CSU schools, according to the California Education Code, funding plays a major part in who is accepted.
According to the Committee of Educational Policy, priority for admission is given to veterans, transfer students who have completed an approved transfer agreement program and California residents entering at a freshman or sophomore level.
“This shouldn’t be like high school where you have a cutoff area,” said Tia Smith, a child development major. “It’s college. That’s not the right way to go. Anybody should be able to go to whatever college they want to.”
Non-California residents have the lowest priority.
“It seems weird,” said 21-year-old student Rosa Gonzalez. “We’ve always had people coming to California to go to our colleges and now they’ll be denied admission.”
When the CSU Board of Trustees adopted an enrollment-management policy in March 2000, as stated in the committee’s November agenda, it was “reaffirmed that upper-division California Community College transfers who are California residents have the highest priority for admission.”
All schools stopped accepting applications Nov. 30, 2008 for consideration of admission. Effective winter, no second-bachelor’s-degree candidates will be admitted-with the exception of select nursing, science and engineering majors.
Campuses will “wait list” non-local freshmen, allowing them to rank the applicants based on their high school grade-point averages if they did not take the SAT or ACT tests.
CSU schools will also turn away any lower-division transfer students.
According to a news release by CSU on http://calstate.edu/, the system has been admitting more students than it has been given funds for in order to allow access to all eligible students. Larger class sizes had been used, as well as temporary faculty, but the arrangement will no longer work, according to CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed.
“We cannot admit students if we are unable to provide adequate classes or instruction, support services or classroom facilities. We are taking this step to ensure the academic quality of the institution,” said Reed in the news release.
Even with the new restrictions in place and the deadline quicker than ever before, CSU schools have received more applications than the previous year. The press release says applications are up by almost 20 percent and up 36 percent for transfer students.
Upper-division transfer students can still submit an application after the Nov. 30 deadline, but they will receive less priority.