state university system plans to cut 40,000 students

[Jeanfromfillmore]

The state university system plans to cut 40,000 students over three years
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/s...1.383e926.html
By MARK MUCKENFUSS
The Press-Enterprise
The California State University system plans to cut enrollment nearly 10 percent over the next three years, Chancellor Charles B. Reed said in a news conference Tuesday morning.
The cuts will affect all campuses, including San Bernardino, which has 17,852 students. The campus plans to reduce that enrollment by 2,300.
Reed said budget reductions, a result of the state's fiscal crisis, are forcing the university system to trim enrollment from a peak last year of 450,000 by 10,000 for the 2009-2010 school year and by an additional 30,000 over the next two school years.
Systemwide, he said, enrollment has already been reduced by 4,000 for the fall. And because most campuses are not admitting new students in the winter and spring terms, he anticipated an additional fall-off of 6,000 students before the school year ends.
The reduction targets are based on a $3.3 billion projected budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year. That budget anticipates an $884 million increase in funding from the state. But at the same time, Reed acknowledged that the state remains in the midst of a financial hole and is looking at a $7 billion to $14 billion shortfall next year.
As part of the enrollment reduction strategy, Cal State campuses are shortening their admissions period. Most are taking applications only from Oct. 1 to Nov. 30, shortening the freshmen application period by three months and the transfer student period by eight months. That has resulted in a flood of applications, pushing totals 53 percent higher than this time last year.
"It's the largest increase in applications we have ever received," Reed said.
Extended deadline
He said seven or eight campuses would continue to take applications after the Nov. 30 deadline. One of those is Cal State San Bernardino.
Olivia Rosas, the school's director of admissions and student recruitment, said the final date for accepting applications has not been determined, but she encouraged students to apply by Nov. 30.
At this time last year, she said, the campus had received 3,350 freshman applications and 802 transfer applications. This year, those numbers are 4,637 and 2,376.
The nearly 300 percent increase in transfer applications is partly because the San Bernardino campus did not accept transfer students in the winter or spring quarters during the 2008-09 school year.
"There's pent-up demand for these students who couldn't come in earlier," Rosas said.
She encouraged applicants not to wait until the last minute.
urged not to wait
"Don't sit at the table to have Thanksgiving dinner if you haven't filled out the application," she said.
Rosas has been in her position for nine years and in the admissions department for more than 20. She said she has never seen cutbacks like the current ones.
"We find ourselves in a very different situation than we have had in the past," she said. "Before, if the CSU or UC campuses were pressed to be more restrictive, students had the community college to get a degree or get the courses or units they needed to transfer. But now the community colleges are being hit really hard and students don't have a place to go and there's the unemployment issue."
Because the fiscal crisis did not hit until after many Cal State San Bernardino students had been accepted for 2009-2010, the bulk of the 2,300 cut in enrollment will take place in 2010-2011. Rosas said the university will be more aggressive in enforcing its disqualification policies.
Candidates for graduate degrees will not be allowed to linger, she said, and those who would have been put on academic probation in the past might be dismissed.
Reed provided a glimmer of hope. He said that federal stimulus money would allow the state campuses to add 3,000 more classes and sections during the winter term. But he was not hopeful about keeping tuition costs at current levels.
"I don't want to increase fees," he said, "but it has to be a part of the mix. I'm not ruling it in, and I'm not ruling it out. This year, everybody felt some pain, the employees, the students, the staff. Come March of 2010, I think it will become clear what the California State University is going to have to do."

[Kathy63]

We find ourselves in a very different situation than we have had in the past," she said. "Before, if the CSU or UC campuses were pressed to be more restrictive, students had the community college to get a degree or get the courses or units they needed to transfer. But now the community colleges are being hit really hard and students don't have a place to go and there's the unemployment issue."

See that. You know what that means?

Universities just can't keep cutting qualified kids who can pay their way for unqualified kids who can't. The universities have been sending students for remedial classes for years. The worst of them have been sent to community colleges for remedial work. I guess they can't do it now. Alums aren't ponying up.

California TRIED to help by ending affirmative action programs but the universities thought they would be crafty by giving credit for life experience. So if you are a gang member who can't read but got social promotion in high school you were in. Especially if Dad was in prison, mom was a hooker and your family sold drugs. Real crafty wasn't it? Boy that one helped out. The campus is really diverse, failing but diverse.

[DerailAmnesty.com]

This situation actually provides the CSU system with an opportunity that won't be capitalized upon in this politically correct universe in which we reside.

Now is the perfect time to raise the academic standards. Let me be blunt. The Cal State campuses in the high density Latino areas now suck the long one. Schools like Cal State L.A. and CSUN graduate a smaller percentage of their student bodies and offer far more remedial English and Mathematics courses, as a matter of necessity, than they did in decades past.

Since I graduated (hundreds of years ago) the UC and CSU systems have added several campuses. We don't need them. Close them down/suspend operations for a couple years. Is it that we don't have a larger population than we did in 1980 or 1990? No, of course not. However, with the sorry state of the public schools in population heavy areas (San Bernardino, L.A., Orange County, San Jose, San Diego, etc.) we're simply not producing as much 4 year university material.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

You're both right. And until the pain of what has happened really hits home, these schools, colleges and universities will continue to play the shell game of hiding their pet projects and slicing off what 'offends them'. I truly look forward to the collapse of the whole system, because if it doesn't happen they will strive to keep the status-quo and continue to use our tax dollars to do it. Sometimes you have to just start anew. Kind of like we're doing here as the new SOS.
The high schools today will pass a student who just shows up, and some are even getting paid to just show up. Now consider that CSUN only requires a 2.0 to get in. That's a C- average and chances are the student can barely read or write with any coherency. But our tax dollars are paying for it, and those up at the top are making a real nice income. They don't live in the ghetto neighborhoods and never spend much time in what many of our towns have become. No they're the ones who feel they have such a noble cause and they'll spend our last tax dollar to promote it.

[Kathy63]

Cal State Irvine is probably the best of the lot, but it's hard to get in there too.