New Cal State Policy Will Favor Local Applicants

Bracing for a tidal wave of extra students, California State University campuses are making plans to restrict admissions by geography--accepting freshmen from nearby high schools and rejecting those from farther away.

The new policy, which will be a fundamental change for Cal State, will affect students applying to San Diego State this fall and could hit Long Beach, Fullerton, San Francisco, Chico, Sonoma and perhaps Northridge in the next two to four years.

Under the new rules, students hoping to attend crowded campuses will be steered toward those with more space--Long Beach applicants to Cal State Dominguez Hills, for example, or Northridge applicants to Cal State L.A. or Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo.

“It’s going to be tricky,” Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the 22-campus system, said Tuesday in a meeting of Times reporters and editors.

Reed and other university officials are expecting complaints as Cal State campuses break from their long-standing commitment to accept all students who meet minimum qualifications of a B average and complete all required college prep courses.

How and when the new policy will be implemented will vary from one campus to the next. San Diego State, which is bursting at the seams with more than 31,000 students, will be the test case.

Under the new statewide policy, campus admissions officers will guarantee seats to all local students with minimum requirements.

Jim Blackburn, Cal State Fullerton’s admissions director, said he would first limit growth by moving up the application deadline rather than turning away students from outside Orange County. The campus accepted applications through early May this year. Some campuses accept them only in November.

Freshman applications are up 12% this year, he said, and transfers at least that much.

Blackburn said that someday it may be necessary to limit students from outside the county.

“It is certainly possible, that we will need to invoke this policy in a future year,” Blackburn said. “We are certainly glad to have this tool in the tool kit.”

At San Diego, officials have defined “local” as all prospective freshmen and community college transfer students from San Diego and Imperial counties.

The definition has yet to be thrashed out at any other campus and promises to become more complex in the sprawling metropolitan region in and around Los Angeles, which includes six campuses: Northridge, Long Beach, Fullerton, Los Angeles, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Channel Islands.

Long Beach, which is bumping up against its limits with 30,000-plus students, has proposed guaranteeing freshman spots to high schools in what campus President Robert Maxson calls “a fairly tight band” around the school.

In a proposal to the chancellor, Maxson suggests guaranteeing spots to students from schools in Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Paramount and the ABC Unified School District. He would also include a few schools farther away at which the Long Beach campus has well-established tutorial programs or other outreach efforts designed to help more poor and minority students prepare for college. Those schools include Huntington Park and South Gate high schools, and Centennial High School in Compton.

Maxson emphasized that the plan, which would probably begin for applicants for the fall of 2002, is merely a recommendation at this point. “This has not been approved by the chancellor’s office,” he said.

Other campuses are not as far along in developing their plans. Some hope that they can take other steps before turning away applicants.

Northridge officials do not believe they will have to resort to turning away students for the near future, said spokesman John Chandler. The opening of Cal State Channel Islands in the fall of 2002 is expected to reduce Northridge’s crowding.

Officials with the Cal State system’s central office, however, believe that both these campuses will exceed capacity as enrollment surges.

Students from outside the local area will still be able to attend an affected Cal State campus, but they will have to meet higher admissions standards, such as higher grades.

At San Diego, which expects to enroll 7,000 new students next year, Ethan Singer, associate vice president for academic affairs, said that about 800 non-local applicants are expected to be turned away, making room for local students.

Under the trustees’ policy, approved earlier this spring, campuses must exhaust every other strategy before spurning applicants.

San Diego State and a growing list of other campuses will convert to year-round classes--by beefing up the summer curriculum--as a way to absorb more students.

Some campuses plan to hold more classes at off-campus centers and persuade students to take distance education classes over the Internet or through two-way video to reduce classroom crowding.

But Reed cautioned that distance education classes will only free up 5% to 7% of capacity for extra students. Previously, he had hoped to have students take one out of five classes online.

All California public colleges and universities are worried about how they will absorb a surge of 714,000 additional students expected to enroll in college by 2010.

The problem is particularly difficult for the Cal State system, in part because of its historic commitment to accept all qualified students. By 2010, Cal State expects to add 130,000 students to today’s enrollment of 360,000.

Staff writer Jeff Gottlieb contributed to this report.