The possibility of enrollment freezes for fall 2013 at Cal State Long Beach will not affect the implementation of proposed admission guidelines that would change the criteria for admission at the freshman and transfer level.
The proposed changes include requiring major-specific criteria for admission to the university, changing the definition of what it means to be a local student and creating a holistic review program for students from communities with historically low college attendance rates.
On Tuesday, the Cal State University Board of Trustees discussed freezing enrollment for spring and wait-listing eligible applicants for fall 2013, pending the results of two state tax initiatives on the ballot this November.
“The new admissions plan is flexible enough to work with enrollment increases or decreases,” said David Dowell, vice provost for planning and budgets and director of strategic planning at CSULB, via email.
The proposed changes were presented to the public during three hearings on Feb. 24 and 29, and March 7.
Last week, President F. King Alexander approved the admissions guidelines proposal, which was then presented to Chancellor Charles B. Reed.
Dowell said the admissions proposal is now under review and is expected to take about a month.
“Fortunately, these new guidelines help us protect our local access despite the massive enrollment reductions facing our campus due to state budget cuts,” Alexander said via email. “Our local students also will get greater access to some of our most popular programs which were limited under the selected impaction system.”
Under the new guidelines, freshmen and transfer students who are defined as local according to their high school, including several public school districts and private schools in proximity to CSULB, will receive priority admittance to impacted programs. Currently, they do not.
Cal State University spokesman Erik Fallis said the changes CSULB is proposing are separate from the rest of the CSU system. The campus is responding to enrollment issues for which the state hasn’t provided support, he said.
He also said that at least one other CSU campus, San Jose State University, is currently in the process of conducting hearings on new enrollment policies.