“The mission of the CSU is to educate California’s students and despite the uncertainty surrounding the budget, we need to provide services as best as we can,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed. “We remain optimistic that the legislature is committed to higher education and that the final budget will restore the necessary funding to the CSU. The restoration of funding is vital to allow us to serve these students.”
Despite the lack of a budget, the CSU opened up the spring 2011 application cycle on August 1. With no clarity on the level of state support for the university, the cycle was extended past the traditional August 31 deadline. On September 16, the CSU announced that a final round of one-time federal stimulus funding would allow the university to admit a limited number of qualified applicants as well as restore some services that had been scaled back due to budget cuts.
At the end of the spring application period the CSU expects to have received about 50,000 applications and would expect to accept as many as 30,000 new students.
The CSU has seen massive cuts in state support over the last two years and was forced to address the reduction in funding through the use of employee furloughs and workforce reductions, enrollment cuts and increased student fees. The reduction in state support forced the CSU to close last year’s spring application cycle, which in turn forced qualified students to apply for admission in the subsequent fall term. This resulted in a record number of applications and unprecedented demand for admission for fall 2010.
To effectively serve both new and continuing students, the CSU awaits the signing of a budget that includes a restoration of state support. The governor’s proposed budget includes the first restoration of state funding to the CSU since 2007 with $305 million to restore a one-time cut and an additional $60.6 million to fund further enrollment expansion.
View the original article on the California State University homepage.