Cal State’s Campuses Limit Rolls : Education: In budget crunch, many schools cut off undergraduate applications for spring term. Long Beach and Cal Poly Pomona will take no new freshmen after fall.

Reacting dramatically to a continuing budget crunch, Cal State Long Beach and Cal Poly Pomona will not enroll any new freshmen or lower-division transfers for this academic year after the fall term.

The move could shut out about 800 students at each campus, officials estimated Tuesday.

Meanwhile, six other Cal State campuses have cut off any further applications for spring enrollment by new undergraduates in most majors. Cal State Northridge and Humboldt State are expected to do the same by Friday, officials said. The moves could affect thousands of students statewide.

“We are trying to serve more students than we can accommodate and we need to get that number down, especially with the budget crisis,” said Toni Beron, spokeswoman for Cal State Long Beach. Last spring, the Long Beach campus enrolled 33,092 students, including 188 first-time freshmen and 610 transfer students who were less than halfway toward earning a bachelor’s degree.

Imposing earlier application deadlines for spring enrollment is nothing new for popular campuses like San Diego State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. But the 1991-92 state budget produced massive faculty layoffs and elimination of course offerings at many of the 20 Cal State campuses. So, more campuses are tightening application periods to limit enrollment, said Stephen J. MacCarthy, spokesman for the 375,000-student system.

Last year, the San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Chico campuses closed spring applications by Sept. 1 and Northridge, Sacramento and San Francisco did the same by Oct. 1. As of Tuesday, Fullerton, Long Beach, Pomona, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo and Sonoma cut off spring 1992 applications for most majors in both upper and lower divisions.

Long Beach and Pomona appear to be the only Cal State schools so far to totally cut out new freshman and lower-division transfers later this academic year. The restriction goes into effect for the spring semester at Long Beach. At Pomona, which is on a different academic calendar, it affects the winter and spring quarters.

Statewide, thousands of students who may want to enroll at other campuses in the spring and were slow in completing applications could be affected. MacCarthy said it was too soon to estimate how many students could be locked out systemwide.

In the past, some Cal State schools allowed applications right up until classes began. The vast majority of new students enroll in the fall.

Greta Mack, an admissions coordinator for the Cal State system, warned that the admissions restrictions could create more pressure on 1992 fall enrollment. She urged students to submit their applications for next fall by the end of this November, after which campuses are free to stop accepting applications.

“They may say, ‘Hey, we have no more seats,’ ” Mack said.

Scott Bowlen, editor in chief of the Daily Forty-Niner, a student newspaper at Cal State Long Beach, said some students may be pleased about the enrollment restrictions because that will make it slightly easier to register for required courses. With the elimination of many courses, the opening of the fall semester has been “a real circus” as students scramble to obtain courses, he said. Statewide, a total of about 4,000 class sections were not scheduled or were forced to be canceled because of budget cuts.

At Cal Poly Pomona, Bruce Grube, provost and academic vice president, said a few exceptions might be made in the winter and spring for new freshman and lower-division transfers. But overall, he said, budget cuts are forcing the campus to look only at transfers who have completed community college study. He, too, predicted “a lot of pressure in the fall.”

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), chairman of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education, criticized the application restrictions, calling them “the start of the downsizing of California higher education.” At a Sacramento press conference Tuesday, Hayden called on Cal State officials to use lottery funds to reopen closed classes.

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