Enrollment question examined

The Sept. 7 article on capping enrollment of students who do not meet admission requirements mi srepresents the intent of the commission recommendation. The statement that a "faculty report" made the recommendation to limit special admit enrollment to 15 percent is literally correct. However, it is incomplete and misrepresents the intent of the r ecommendation.

I served as a member of the commission (President's and Academic Senate's Joint Commission for Study and Improvement of Graduation Rates) and what we recommended was to "Improve recruitment of eligible freshmen including under-repres ented students and limit special admits to 15 percent."

My understanding of the intent of the recommendation was NOT to decrease the number of special admits, but to bring the balance between qualified and special admit students to what it has tradi tionally been at CSULB. The number of special admits would not change; just the percent.

This is an important distinction. Focusing on the percentage figure misrepresents the intent of the recommendation. We did not recommend fewer special admits.< p> I would also add that the article failed to give proper weight to the fact that the majority of the recommendations got lost in a misunderstanding of one recommendation.

Dick Schmidt, College of Education