Cal State extends deadline

The chancellor of the Cal State University system announced Wednesday that he would allow seven campuses to extend by one month an unusually early application deadline that was initially imposed on potential freshmen because of the state’s budget crisis.

Charles B. Reed, head of the 23-campus system, earlier this month had ordered all the schools to close their freshman application windows on Feb. 1 as a way to reduce enrollment growth that would not be funded under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spending plan for next year. Usually, some Cal State campuses take applicants through the spring and even into the summer.

At Wednesday’s Cal State Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach, Reed said he would push the deadline for fall first-time freshmen until March 1 at seven mainly urban campuses that serve a high proportion of low-income and minority students. Those schools are Cal State L.A., Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State San Bernardino, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State Sacramento, Cal State East Bay and Cal State Monterey Bay.

“I make a few mistakes every once in a while. But I try to fix them and not make them again,” Reed said of the deadline decision. He said he learned that many of those seven schools, which traditionally do not fill up early, had scheduled recruiting events in February that he did not want to scuttle.

In some cases, the Feb. 1 deadline has little effect. The most popular Cal State schools, including those at Long Beach and San Diego, already have shut their freshman application windows. Cal State Fullerton has closed to freshman applications except for potential engineering majors who finish their paperwork by Feb. 1.

The Feb. 1 and March 1 deadlines do not affect potential upper-division transfer or graduate students at campuses with room for them.

Carol Nittayo, director of admissions at Cal State L.A., said her office was relieved that Feb. 1 was no longer her freshman deadline. She said that the school last year kept the door open until late August for its freshman class and that 1,230 applications were received last year after March 1 for a freshman class that eventually enrolled nearly 2,000.

With a shorter time period now, she said her staff would work hard to entice accepted students to actually enroll in the fall. And she urged potential applicants to take the new March 1 deadline seriously.

“Don’t procrastinate until the last minute because there will not be that opportunity after that,” Nittayo said.

The Cal State system enrolls about 450,000 full- and part-time students and had been expecting to add about 10,000 more in the fall. But officials said that the governor’s proposed budget, which reduces state funding by about 10%, would not allow for such increased enrollment. So Reed imposed the shorter application deadline, although he said he and other higher education leaders will be lobbying in Sacramento for more revenue.

The governor’s proposal also calls for most student fees to rise by 10% in the Cal State system. That would bring basic undergraduate fees for California residents to about $3,797, not including housing and food. Graduate students would pay more.

The trustees did not act on the fees Wednesday and said they probably would consider them at their March meeting. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who is an ex officio trustee, said he would argue then to freeze fees and allow them to rise only to match inflation.

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larry.gordon@latimes.com