CSU officials announced an enrollment freeze, as a result of budget cuts, that will require CSU campuses to freeze enrollment for the next spring semester of 2013.
According to Erik Fallis, CSU media relations manager, 15 CSU campuses have frozen enrollment beginning Spring 2012 and eight campuses will accept only a few hundred applicants from community-college transfers.
“We expect that there will be a number of transfer applicants that range in the hundreds who will apply.” Fallis said. “By law, if a community college transfer applicant has finished their associate’s degree then they will automatically be in the system for those eight campuses. That does not mean they are enrolled, but they will be in the system.”
The eight campuses are Channel Islands, Chico, East Bay, Fullerton, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Bernardino and Sonoma.
“For spring we are going to be closed,” Fallis said. “There will be eight campuses opened primarily to serve community college transfer students. This is definitely going to happen.”
The board of trustees discussed this plan in a Tuesday meeting that was held at Cal State Long Beach.
Mission College student Vivian Carchi, who is hoping to transfer to CSUN as soon as she finished her general courses, believes the enrollment freeze will affect her future plans.
“I feel let down and a sense of abandonment. CSUN was my go to college because of its location and relatively low prices (compared to other State Universities).” she said. “Now my plan, my future, has a huge wrench just stuck in there. We are told that we need an education so we can have more opportunities to be successful. But how can we achieve that when The California State University system is literally shutting their school doors in our faces?”
The meeting discussed strategies to overcome the $750 million funding cuts from 2011-12. According to Fallis, they will be sustaining these cuts.
Fallis further explained that there may still be enrollment reduction for Spring 2013, but
this is still not confirmed and will depend on the initiative proposed by Governor Brown.
If the initiative is not passed by voters in November then CSU will face an additional $200 million cut that may cause board of trustees to consider enrollment reduction, reducing classes and layoffs.
Applicants for Fall 2013 will be “waitlisted,” according to Fallis. This means that if the initiative is not passed in November, there will be more restrictions for applicants the beginning of the Fall 2013.
“This is just another possible scenario if we get the additional $200 million cut.” Fallis said
According to Fallis, the number of CSU applicants for community college transfers for Spring semesters are about 16,000. The number of CSU applicants transferring from a community college with an associate’s degrees, fall in the hundreds.
The overall number of CSU applicants is 700,000 for a fall semester.
According to a CSU budget fact sheet, other topics that are being discussed include Gov. Brown’s proposal to increase the GPA requirement for Cal Grant applicants.
Elizabeth Chapin of the CSU’s public affairs told student reporters that there will be a media teleconference on Wednesday, March 21 at 3:30 p.m.
CSU officials will be present to discuss budget strategies. Officials who will be present are the CSU Assistant Vice Chancellor, Robert Turnage and the CSSA Executive Director, Miles Nevin.
“I’m telling students to hold their questions until the conference.” Chapin said. “There will be a Q&A and there will be time to clarify what may happen and answer student questions.”
