BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1349
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
1349 (Weber) - As Introduced February 27, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill requires the California State University (CSU)
Trustees and requests the University of California (UC) Regents
to:
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1)Guarantee undergraduate admissions, though not necessarily at
a campus or major of an applicant's choice, to all California
residents who apply on time and satisfy the respective
systems' undergraduate admission eligibility requirements.
2)Report to the Legislature, by July 1, 2017, and annually
thereafter, for each campus and systemwide, total
undergraduate applications received, the number admitted and
the number not admitted for the coming academic year.
FISCAL EFFECT:
1)CSU indicates that, in the fall of 2014, it denied admission
to about 30,000 fully eligible California residents due to
lack of funding. Assuming that, through redirection and
required admission to the system, the CSU experienced an
enrollment increase of 15,000 full-time equivalent students,
the impact in the first year would exceed $100 million. The
cost for this cohort would be on-going for at least four-years
as these students complete their studies at CSU. In future
years, there would be additional costs for each cohort of
students that were admitted beyond state funding. In addition,
there could be significant capital outlay costs to accommodate
the additional enrollment.
In addition, CSU does not have a centralized admission
process, and would thus require several million dollars for
technology upgrades and procedural changes to implement a
redirection of CSU-eligible applicants to other CSU campuses.
2)UC contends that it is currently meeting the bill's
requirement, in part by offering many eligible students
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admission to the Merced campus rather than a campus of their
choice, and most of these students do not accept admission. To
the extent Merced and other UC campuses eventually reach their
enrollment capacity, and eligible students could no longer be
redirected, the bill could create cost pressure to accommodate
additional eligible students, including new capital outlays.
3)The reporting requirements for both segments are minor and
absorbable.
4)A new eligibility study would be needed, at a cost of at least
$1 million, so that the segments could ensure that they
accepting admission for the correct cohort of applicants
pursuant to the state's Master Plan for Higher Education.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, as the economy improves and
funding for our public postsecondary educational institutions
increases, it is time for the state to enshrine a critical
principal of the Master Plan in state law. This bill is
intended to guarantee undergraduate admission for all eligible
California resident applicants and ensure reporting to the
Legislature on resident undergraduate admission. The author
believes this bill appropriately reaffirms and refocuses CSU
and UC on educating California students, while still
maintaining the beneficial infusion of talent from
nonresidents.
2)Admissions. In addition to other admission criteria for each
respective system, the state's Master Plan calls for freshman
eligibility pools for UC and CSU. UC is to draw its incoming
freshman class from the top 12.5% (one-eighth) of public high
school graduates and CSU is to draw from the top 33%
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(one-third) of this cohort. UC and CSU currently report on
whether they are accommodating eligible freshman students; UC
asserts it has been admitting all eligible students, although
not necessarily to the campus and program of choice. CSU
claims it has denied access to over 18,000 eligible freshman
applicants. However, according to the LAO, because an
eligibility study has not been conducted since 2007, UC and
CSU have no way of knowing if they are actually admitting or
denying students in compliance with the Master Plan.
The Master Plan calls for UC and CSU to accept qualified
transfer students who complete 60 units of transferable credit
at a community college and meet minimum GPA requirements. For
UC the minimum GPA is 2.4 and for CSU the minimum GPA is 2.0.
UC indicates it is currently admitting all eligible transfer
students, however not all students are being accepted into
their campus or program of choice. CSU reports denying
admission to 11,800 eligible transfer students in fall 2014.
Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081