CSSM Expects to Turn Away Students This Fall

Facing budget cutbacks and cramped facilities, Cal State San Marcos expects to begin turning away qualified students for the first time this fall, school officials say.

The nation’s newest public university opened its doors last August to everyone who met the California State University system’s entrance requirements. Even though enrollment outstripped projections by 60%, all applicants were admitted.

For the 1991-92 school year, however, officials at the fledgling campus said they will not go beyond their projected number of 750 full-time students.

Compounding the problems is an expected increase in demand for Cal State San Marcos classes because course offerings at San Diego State University are being cut back under the tight state budget.

“When the student at SDSU starts hearing that there really will be fewer sections of English, math and biology, they will start looking for another school,” said Bill Stacy, university president.

The university had the equivalent of 404 full-time students this spring, 60% more than the 250 for which the school had been budgeted. Enrollment for September will be kept much closer to its target of 750 students, Stacy said.

“I think that we will face demands for services that we can’t give here in North County,” Stacy said. “The students in the CSU, they have in the statutes of this state a right to come to school, but we aren’t going to be able to obey that law.”

Most of the 20 Cal State campuses now admit all qualified applicants, while seven others, including SDSU, are “impacted” and turn away students interested in concentrating in some specific fields.

“So far we’ve not adopted a strategy that will allow us to discriminate for higher (grade point averages) or test scores, or even majors,” Stacy said.

He did, however, say that there is extremely high enrollment of psychology majors at the university and that enrollment in that program may become limited if the trend continues.

“We would likely be more interested in a student that is interested in studying mathematics and science. There are not as many math people in the U.S. and California, so we want to encourage math enrollments,” Stacy said.

Only nine students are majoring in math and 11 in biology at Cal State San Marcos, while liberal studies and business administration have 170 and 161 students, respectively.

Cal State San Marcos had a $9-million budget this year, and had projected a budget of $15 million for the next fiscal year because of the increase in enrollment, said financial services director Suzanne Green.

Now the university is looking at a 10% slice in that $15 million and possibly more since the state revised its projected deficit from $7 billion to $12.6 billion, Green said.

Although other CSU campuses are facing faculty layoffs, Cal State San Marcos is expecting its faculty numbers to double as budgeted enrollment triples.

The university had planned to hire as many as 31 new professors for the 1991-92 school year. The school has already signed 10 professors to contracts and will continue recruiting, even though it is unclear how many it will actually be able to hire, Executive Vice President Dick Rush said.

The school has already begun to sign contracts with professors, and, if further cuts are implemented because of an unexpected increase in the state budget deficit, the university might not be able to fulfill those contracts, Stacy said.

“It keeps you up at night thinking about the contracts you’ve signed and the promises you’ve made. . . . And it’s all on faith that the state will come through with the money,” he said.

Cal State San Marcos’ capital budget has already been devastated, with $7.9 million in equipment and building plans having gone unfunded with the defeat last November of Proposition 143, a $450-million higher education bond.

The loss of those funds means that Cal State San Marcos’ second phase of academic buildings and its main library, originally scheduled to be completed by 1995, will be delayed at least a year, and equipment for the academic complex already under construction may not be available.

The lack of buildings has hindered the school’s ability to recruit faculty, particularly in the sciences, Stacy said.

“Where I am, bluntly, hurting is when the biologist and the chemist says, ‘Where are the labs?’ and the musician says, ‘Where are the practice rooms?’ ” Stacy said.