California State University plans to close admissions allowing only a limited number of California residents for the spring of 2013, because of budget cuts made to campuses.
Massive budget cuts have caused 10 of the 23 campuses included in the CSU system to allow a limited number of students to enroll. The small amount of students they are admitting differ between each campus and each program, but one of the few exceptions are college students transferring from California community colleges who have already received an “associated degree of transfer.” Colleges have just recently begun offering this degree of transfer and therefore not many students have earned the ability to transfer yet.
“Campuses are closed to most students, however, a limited number of students are being admitted — mainly those who earned Associate for Transfer degrees from California Community Colleges,” said Erik Fallis, media relations manager of California State University. “This exception likely has the most direct impact on your peers at Skyline College.”
Senate Bill 1440, which was passed in September 2010, created the degree in order to form a smoother path for community college students who want to transfer into state universities. In many community colleges, the conditions for an associate degree are different from what is required to transfer to CSU or the University of California.
There are 5 programs that have been approved of the transfer degree, while others are still in process. Jacqueline Escobar, the transfer center director, recommends to apply for the degree in this fall semester to give the transfer center “a heads up” on who will be completing the associated degree of transfer. Workshops will be held about the degree and will help the students understand the different programs, the advantages, and who benefits.
“We encourage students to apply for the degree because it has many benefits for students,” said Escobar.
According to Erik Fallis, CSU is not in favor of limiting access to higher education and does not think that it is in the best interest of California. Regrettably, the university’s state support has cut about $1 million since 2007-2008. The state government is imposing that CSU is to make difficult compromises “between access, affordability and quality”.
The 2012-13 state budget includes a mid-year budget cut for CSU depending on the result of Proposition 30 on the November ballot. If voters reject the measure, the CSU will be cut by an additional $250 million, meaning the institution will have lost almost $1.2 billion since 2007-08. This would result in the formulation of a contingency plan to manage the budget cut adopted by the CSU Trustees at their September meeting. Options include approaches to reduce payroll costs, a tuition fee increase, enrollment reductions, and other ways to receive additional earnings or reduce spending.
“(It’s) messed up that they want money over trying to educate kids from the same state,” said Desi Fatilua, a student of Skyline College.
The first workshop for the Associated Degree of Transfer is September 13th. Students can find more information about the degree at sp1440.org
