Despite early enrollment deadlines designated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of his proposed 2008-09 budget cuts to the California State University system, Sacramento State received a 6.7 percent increase of applications than last year at this time.

Sac State received 23,580 applications for the fall 2008 semester from first-time freshmen, transfer students and graduate students as of Thursday, according to a press release from the Sac State Public Affairs office. The number of received applications increased by 1,488 applications from last year’s 22,092 total applications.

Sac State admitted 125 percent, or 5,589 more students, as of Thursday than this time last year, reaching a level of 10,030 admitted students over an admittance level of 4,441 students last year, the press release states.

The CSU received about 48,000, or 10.3 percent, more undergraduate applications for fall 2008 semester as of Friday. The enrollment deadlines were moved to Feb. 1 or March 1 from August, September and November deadlines because of the governor’s proposed $312.9 million cuts to the CSU system.

According to a press release from the CSU Public Affairs office, the CSU received about 515,000 undergraduate applications from first-time freshmen and transfer students this year and 467,000 undergraduate applications last year.

Clara Potes-Fellow, CSU spokesperson, said the increase in received applications is a result of more students reaching the CSU eligibility requirements.

“Most students are graduating from high school and there are also more students graduating with the classes that are necessary to get into college,” she said. “There has been extensive outreach and information to high school students that provides them with details about classes that are necessary to get into college.”

Budgetary constraints of the state and the proposed budget cuts require the CSU system to cap enrollment for 2008-09 at the 2007-08 level of 450,000 students regardless of the number of applicants applying, Potes-Fellow said.

According to a press release from the CSU Public Affairs office, seven of the CSU campuses, including Sac State, have extended the enrollment deadline to March 1.

Representatives from the Outreach, Admissions and Records office at Sac State were unavailable for comment.

The California Faculty Association held a telephone conference Jan. 29 to discuss the negative effects of the governor’s proposed budget on the CSU system, including enrollment deadlines.

Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA, said 10,000 qualified students would be unable to attend a CSU because they weren’t able to apply prior to the earlier application deadline.

“The chancellor basically said if we don’t get the funding, even though there are students out there, we’re just going to have to arbitrarily say we’re going to cut off the enrollment of 10,000,” said Kim Geron, vice president of the CFA.

“They selected first-time freshmen as the place to limit enrollment because they had to limit enrollment somewhere,” Geron said.

Taiz said many students are on the chopping block this year because community colleges don’t have the capacity to take in the additional students.

The Los Rios Community College District, including American River College, has 37,000 enrolled students and is expecting an influx because of the CSU enrollment deadline, said Stephen Peithman, public information officer at ARC.

“Community colleges are more than happy to have additional students; that’s not a problem,” she said. “But there are some issues here. And one of them certainly would be how much can we grow based on our budget allocations from the state. It’s something we have to monitor very carefully.”

Because community colleges are funded based on growth of enrollment levels from the previous year, money may have to come out of the college’s pocket to compensate for higher enrollment, Peithman said.

“Additional students that swell the enrollment (are), to some degree, a good thing because the state pays us based on our enrollment,” Peithman said. “But if it goes too high then we’ve got a problem because the state won’t fund those extra students.”

Peithman said ARC might cut or cancel classes if enrollment increases to a level that cannot be covered by state funds.

Students applying to ARC can enroll up to the first day of classes in August if there are available spots in the individual courses, Peithman said.

Sue Michaels, marketing and public relations manager for Sierra College, said Sierra College should be able to accommodate an enrollment increase resulting from the early enrollment deadline for Sac State.

“We’re situated to grow right now so we can accommodate increased enrollment. Of course, we’ll have to really think about what classes we’re offering,” Michaels said. “If we’re going to be getting more transfer students, we’re going to have to have more of the transfer core classes like English 1A, so we can accommodate that population.”

“I think Sierra College will be fine. I’m pretty sure we’ll be OK. We’ve got four campuses and our online programs are pretty robust now,” she said.

Michaels said community colleges have a budget crunch similar to Sac State and thinks lawmakers need to look at higher education.

Ashley Downton can be reached at [email protected]