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."