BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2401
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Date of Hearing: May 12, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 2401 (Block) - As Amended: March 24, 2010
Policy Committee: Higher
EducationVote:6-3
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill requires the California State University (CSU) to
provide applicants residing in the local service area (LSA)
admission to the applicant's local CSU campus over other
California residents or out-of-state applicants entering as
first-time freshman or sophomores. Specifically, this bill:
1)Modifies legislative intent language by stating that it is
intent with respect to CSU and University of California (UC)
admissions, rather than admission priority practices, for the
segments to follow in numerical order the categories of
students as enumerated in current law. (See Comment #3
below.)
2)Modifies legislative intent by stating it is intent that,
within the existing categories of students, specified groups
be granted admission, rather than receive priority
consideration in admissions practices of CSU and UC.
3)Requires CSU to provide admission, within existing enrollment
categories, to applicants residing in the LSA 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.
4)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.
FISCAL EFFECT
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To the extent impacted CSU campuses are unable to serve
non-local students because of priority admission for local
students, and to the extent more campuses become impacted due to
the enrollment demands of local area students and to budget
limitations, there could be pressure to replicate certain
high-demand or specialty programs at non-impacted campuses.
Depending on the type of program, start-up costs for each could
range from several hundred thousand dollars to a few million
dollars depending on the need for facilities and equipment.
As written, the bill could have a similar impact on UC, however,
the author indicates it is not his intent to have the bill apply
to UC and that he will amend the bill accordingly should it move
forward.
COMMENTS
1)Background . General Fund support for CSU has declined by about
$620 million (20%) between 2007-08 and the current year. 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. To accomplish this
reduction, CSU has employed various strategies. According to
CSU, campuses are still required to admit all local
CSU-eligible first-time freshmen and local upper-division
transfer students per the usual established admissions policy,
unless the campus declares itself impacted.
Campus 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.
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 constitute at
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least 37% of incoming freshmen. This is the average
representation over the last 11 years, but is considerably
lower than the 54% in 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 be
provided a guarantee of subsequent 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.
2)Purpose . 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."
3)Current law requires the University of California (UC) and CSU
to:
a) 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:
i) Provide priority enrollment, in numerical order, to
the following categories of students:
(1) Continuing undergraduate students in good
standing.
(2) CCC transfer students who have successfully
concluded a course of study in an approved transfer
agreement program.
(3) Other CCC students who have met all of the
requirements for transfer, giving preference to
students from historically underrepresented groups or
economically disadvantaged families to the fullest
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extent possible in transfer admissions decisions.
(4) Other qualified transfer students.
(5) California residents entering at the freshman
or sophomore levels.
b) Provide priority consideration in admissions practice to
the following groups of applicants within each of the
enrollment categories described above:
(6) California residents who are recently released
veterans of the armed forces, with priority to those
veterans previously enrolled in good standing.
(7) CCC transfers.
(8) Applicants previously enrolled at the campus
to which they are applying, provided they left this
institution in good standing.
(9) Applicants who have a degree or credential
objective that is not generally offered at other
public institutions of higher learning within
California.
(10) Applicants for whom the distance involved in
attending another institution would create financial
or other hardships.
4)Opposition . According to CSU, AB 2401 would "fundamentally
change the role of the system within the state's Master Plan
for Higher Education. If this measure is enacted, we expect
that most of our campuses would no longer serve the state but
only their local regions and in turn, limit real access to
thousands of students for years to come.
"The Master Plan and current statutes provide that California
students have access to the system not a specific campus, and
guide us on priorities for admission and enrollment management
strategies?AB 2401 is a blunt instrument for a problem brought
on by severe budget cuts. It will forever change the role CSU
plays in serving the community college students by requiring
each campus to take every local student period. This means the
UDT [upper division transfer students] and FTF [first-time
freshman] have equal standing in admissions decisions even in
light of fiscal resources, our transfer mission and the
directive that we maintain balance of 60:40 of UDT and
freshman in our student body."
It appears CSU may be in part misreading the bill, however, as
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the bill provides priority admission for local students within
each enrollment category. Under current law UDTs are in a
higher category than FTF. The bill, therefore, would likely
change the mix of local to non-local students within each
category, but would not necessarily change the number of
students from each category. Nevertheless, AB 2401 does appear
to usurp administrative authority in a very significant way.
5)Related Legislation . AB 2402 (Block), also on today's
committee agenda, requires CSU to follow specified public
notice criteria prior to adopting a change in the admissions
criteria that affects students in the CSU campus local service
area (LSA) and requires such changes to become effective only
after a period of at least one year has elapsed after approval
of that change by the CSU Board of Trustees.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081