BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2402
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 20, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Marty Block, Chair
AB 2402 (Block) - As Introduced: February 19, 2010
SUBJECT : California State University: admissions: procedural
requirements.
SUMMARY : Require the California State University (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), 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 CSU Board of
Trustees (BOT). Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires the president of a CSU campus to do all of the
following prior to adopting a change in the criteria for
admission that affects applicants in the LSA of a CSU campus,
including changes to transfer requirements, elimination of
majors, and determinations regarding impaction of majors:
a) Consult with the following stakeholders that are located
within the LSA of the affected campus in a public meeting:
the governing boards of school districts, the governing
boards of California Community College (CCC) districts, and
community organizations.
b) Hold three public hearings in the LSA of the affected
campus to solicit public comments relative to the proposed
changes in admissions criteria.
c) Present the proposed change in admissions criteria at
meetings of the governing boards of all high school
districts, unified school districts, and CCC districts
within the LSA of the affected campus.
d) Provide public notice of the proposed change in
admissions criteria, as follows:
i) Publish the notice on the Internet Web site for the
affected campus and in three newspapers of general
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circulation in the local service area of the affected
campus;
ii) Include in the notice a description of the proposed
change, the right of the public to comment orally or in
writing on the proposed change, and the dates, times, and
locations of the public meetings and public hearings
required by this bill; and,
iii) Publish the notice at least 30 days before the first
public meeting or public hearing.
e) Submit the proposed change to the CSU BOT for approval.
1)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 CSU BOT.
2)Defines the LSA for a campus as the area set forth in the CSU
Coded Memorandum AA-2005-05, dated February 23, 2005.
3)Requires the CSU BOT to ensure that any change in criteria for
admissions to a CSU campus complies with the above provisions.
EXISTING LAW : Requires the CSU BOT to adopt rules and
regulations for the government of the CSU and requires those
rules and regulations to be published for distribution as soon
as practicable after adoption. Existing law prescribes notice
and hearing procedures for the adoption, amendment, and repeal
of those regulations.
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
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guaranteeing admission only to students who apply during the
Fall application period (October 1 - November 30) as well as
establishing 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 ratio of
60% upper-division students (juniors and seniors) to 40%
lower-division students (sophomores and freshman).
Campus impaction : 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
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
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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, "When many
potential students reside within a local service area of a
campus, any change in the admissions policy without their
notification results in students who had planned to attend
locally as their only feasible option now witnessing their
opportunities for college unfairly disappear."
What happens when the annual Budget Act is late? The annual
Budget Act is not always enacted in a timely manner, which may
make it difficult for a CSU campus to conduct the necessary
hearings and honor the one-year waiting period before
implementing enrollment reduction strategies that impact
admission of students in the campus's LSA.
Elimination of majors : This bill would require public hearings,
as defined, whenever a campus decides to discontinue a major.
Elimination of majors is both an academic and administrative
decision. Is it appropriate to require a public hearing for
these types of decisions, and would it effectively prevent CSU
from ever discontinuing a major?
Related legislation : AB 2401 (Block) of 2010, to be heard by
this Committee on April 20, would require CSU to provide
applicants residing in the local service area, 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.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
AB 2402
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