BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2401
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 20, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Marty Block, Chair
AB 2401 (Block) - As Amended: March 24, 2010
SUBJECT : Public postsecondary education: admissions policy.
SUMMARY : Requires the California State University (CSU) to
provide applicants residing in the local service area (LSA), as
defined, admission to the applicant's local CSU campus over
other California residents or out-of-state applicants entering
as first-time freshman or sophomores, provided they meet
relevant admissions criteria. Specifically, this bill :
1)States legislative intent with respect to enrollment planning
and admission, rather than admission priority practice, for
specified categories of students.
2)Requires CSU to provide admission within existing enrollment
categories to applicants residing in the LSA, as defined, of a
CSU campus over other California residents or out-of-state
applicants entering as first-time freshman or sophomores,
provided they meet relevant admissions criteria.
3)Defines an LSA as the CSU service area for the campus as set
forth in the CSU Coded Memorandum AA-2005-05, dated February
23, 2005.
EXISTING LAW requires the University of California (UC) and CSU
maintain a student body comprised of 60% upper-division students
and 40% lower-division students and states legislative intent
that both systems do the following:
1)Provide priority enrollment, in numerical order, to the
following categories of students:
a) Continuing undergraduate students in good standing;
b) CCC transfer students who have successfully concluded a
course of study in an approved transfer agreement program;
c) Other CCC students who have met all of the requirements
for transfer, giving preference to students from
historically underrepresented groups or economically
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disadvantaged families to the fullest extent possible in
transfer admissions decisions;
d) Other qualified transfer students; and,
e) California residents entering at the freshman or
sophomore levels.
2)Provide priority consideration in admissions practice to the
following groups of applicants within each of the enrollment
categories described above:
a) California residents who are recently released veterans
of the armed forces of the United States, giving priority
to veterans who were previously enrolled in good standing
at a UC or CSU campus over other veterans recently released
from military service;
b) CCC transfers;
c) Applicants who have been previously enrolled at the
campus to which they are applying, provided they left this
institution in good standing;
d) Applicants who have a degree or credential objective
that is not generally offered at other public institutions
of higher learning within California; and,
e) Applicants for whom the distance involved in attending
another institution would create financial or other
hardships.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Background : General Fund support for CSU has
declined by about $620 million, or 20%, between 2007-08 and the
current year; in addition, CSU has been overenrolled by 40,000
students. As a result, CSU intends to admit no students in
spring 2010 and has set a goal to reduce overall enrollment by
about 40,000 students over a two-year period.
Enrollment reductions : To accomplish this reduction in student
enrollments CSU has employed various strategies, including
guaranteeing admission only to students who apply during the
initial (Fall) application period (October 1 - November 30) as
AB 2401
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well as supplemental admissions criteria such as grade point
average (GPA) or wait listing in order to control enrollment.
Priority is given to continuing undergraduate students already
enrolled, followed by CCC transfer students meeting transfer
requirements, and California residents entering at freshman or
sophomore levels. According to CSU, campuses are still required
to admit all local CSU-eligible first-time freshmen and local
upper-division transfer students as is the usual established
admissions policy, unless the campus declares itself impacted.
All campuses must still maintain a ration of 60% upper-division
students (juniors and seniors) to 40% lower-division students
(sophomores and freshman).
Major v. campus impaction : An undergraduate major or campus is
designated as impacted when the number of applications received
during the Fall filing period exceeds the number of available
spaces. Such majors or campuses are authorized to use
supplementary admission criteria to screen applications. When
the major is impacted, students can still be admitted to the
campus in an alternate major, or they may eventually be admitted
to the oversubscribed major if they meet the supplementary
admission criteria. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo continues to be
impacted in all majors.
Campus impaction (otherwise known as campuswide impaction) means
that a campus has exhausted existing enrollment capacity in
terms of the instructional resources and physical capacity of
the campus, and because the campus receives more eligible
applicants during the Fall admission application filing period
than can be accommodated, the campus must therefore restrict
enrollment to the campus for a specific enrollment category
(i.e. first-time freshmen). As of November 2009, Fullerton, Long
Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, San Diego, and Sonoma are designated as
impacted CSU campuses. Students interested in an impacted major
or campus must apply for admission during the Fall filing period
for admission in the following Fall. Applications for admission
to impacted majors and campuses are not accepted after the Fall
filing period.
SDSU : Of the five impacted CSU campuses, only SDSU has ended
its policy of admitting every qualified applicant in its LSA.
SDSU is continuing to give special preference to high school
seniors from this area by guaranteeing they are at least 37
percent of incoming freshmen. This represents the average
percentage seen over the last 11 years but is considerably lower
AB 2401
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than the 54 percent seen the past two years. While SDSU has
acknowledged that dropping the admission guarantee for seniors
in SDSU's LSA would disrupt the plans of many students-the
number of local freshmen admitted to SDSU could go down by as
many as 1,000 next fall-the campus has noted that the seniors
who will be denied admission under this policy still will have a
path to SDSU enrollment through a special "transfer admission
guarantee" (TAG). This TAG would guarantee admission to LSA
residents who were denied admission to SDSU if the student
completes general education course work and earns a GPA of at
least 2.4 or the GPA required for their intended major within
three years.
Need for this bill : According to the author, despite CSU's
assertion that local students would be given priority in
admissions, "San Diego State University (SDSU) denied 1,740
fully-qualified local students admission. These 1,740 students
are young men and women that have followed all of the
established rules and met the all requirements only to have the
rules changed on them after it was too late to do anything about
it. To close the doors of admission on local students who have
done nothing but follow published admissions guidelines is
principally unfair." "Students who are forced to attend other
schools may not receive acceptance in their program of choice
and can sometimes face tens of thousands of dollars in
additional costs."
Definition of LSA : This bill codifies an internal CSU
memorandum, and by defining LSAs in statute, will require a
statutory change whenever CSU attempts to modify LSA boundaries
in response to demographic changes or additional campuses or
centers. The Committee may wish to consider language that
defines an LSA as most recent definition recognized by CSU.
Administrative purview : This bill would effectively supercede
CSU campuses' authority to manage admissions. In light of the
fact that CSU is making enrollment reductions based on a lack of
state funds to support those enrollments, the Committee may wish
to consider how this would affect CSU admissions. If LSA
students are given priority, who will be denied admission?
60/40 ratio : If CSU campuses must accept all eligible LSA
residents, could this affect CSU's ability to maintain the
statutorily required undergraduate student population composed
of 60% upper-division students to 40% lower-division students?
AB 2401
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Related legislation : AB 2402 (Block), which is set for hearing
in this Committee on April 20, 2010, would require CSU to follow
specified public notice criteria prior to adopting a change in
the admissions criteria that affects students in the CSU campus
LSA, as defined, and requires a change in admissions criteria
that affects the eligibility of applicants residing within the
LSA of the affected campus to become effective only after a
period of at least one year has elapsed after approval of that
change by the trustees.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960