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Enrollment limits
steadily pushed
By Lisa Huynh
Special to the On-line Forty-Niner
Cal State Long
Beach has seen a 17 percent increase in the number of students
enrolled at the university for the past six years, prompting
the university to implement small projects to offset the problem.
Roughly 26,400
students were enrolled in fall of 1995 and in comparison with
fall of 2000, the figures have significantly increased to
30,920 students, according to the CSULB Office of Institutional
Research.
The university
can expect well over 32,000 students for fall of 2001, according
to Dr. Gloria J. Kapp, senior director of Enrollment Services.
This is of great concern because CSULB's capacity is about
33,000 students in terms of campus size, number of classrooms
and number of faculty.
"What we're
trying to do this time with the enrollment growth is manage
it so that we don't get beyond what we can offer," Kapp
said.
To improve the
condition of overcrowded classrooms the university has implemented
many small projects, according to Kapp.
The university
has been authorized by the Chancellor's Office to begin competitive
admissions for fall 2002 since CSULB has been designated as
an impacted campus, Kapp said. This in turn will help
maintain the amount of students admitted to the university
at a reasonable number.
"We will still
admit everyone who meets these requirements," Kapp said,
"but if we have more applicants than we can admit, then
we can raise the requirements just a little bit."
For the past two
years now, the university has added more Monday, Wednesday
and Friday classes to the class schedule in order to spread
out the time to decrease the volume of students per classroom,
according to Kapp.
Distance learning,
online courses and taking classes at community colleges while
attending the university are other alternatives students may
seek, according to Kapp.
"The other
big push in the whole CSU this past summer is the state funded
summer session," Kapp said. The facilities are more efficiently
used if students are paying the same fees in the summer sessions
and the regular semester.
In order to provide
more classrooms to ease overcrowding some buildings are currently
being renovated or remodeled such as the Fine Arts Buildings
and some of the Liberal Arts buildings.
Other new buildings
possible campus expansion have been considered, Kapp said.
However, these projects are too far into the future to determine
right now.
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