Fall head-count tallied

Full-time entollment drops despite more new students

Final enrollment figures for this semester show that Cal State Long Beach admitted 339 fewer full-time students than in fall 1993, despite drawing more new students overall.

According to the Sept. 26 final count, 26,277 students were signed up for classes, giving CSULB a total of 19,422 full-time equivalent students. Last fall, CSULB enrolled 19,761 FTES.

Unless next semester's enrollment surpasses last spring's totals, the university will not reach its target enrollment of 19,208 FTES, a goal set by the California State University Chancellor's Office.

The CSU asked its campuses to increase enrollment over last year because of pressure from the state Legislature, which gave the CSU system an extra $65 million so that it could serve 2,500 more students systemwide, Chancellor's Office spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said.

"Campuses were asked to take more [students] since the Legislature asked us to take more," she said.

CSULB officials tried to increase enrollment for this school year by accepting new student applications as late as mid-August - the latest deadline allowed by the CSU, said Ron Lee, associate vice president of Information Management. Universities usually cut off applications around July, he said.

The strategy of extending the university's admissions deadline, not used at CSULB since the 1980s, brought in 7,447 new students, compared with 6,952 last fall, when admissions closed earlier, Lee said. He attributed the overall enrollment decline to a large number of graduations and dropouts.

Even if CSULB does not reach the CSU's target enrollment, the university will not be penalized unless the average FTES figure for both semesters falls to 18,824, or 2 percent under the target.

To achieve that bare-minimum figure, the university must enroll 18,994 FTES next semester. Last spring's enrollment was 18,464 FTES.

Lee said there is little university officials can do to make up the decline before next semester, because the university receives fewer applications for spring semesters. Nevertheless, he said he does not expect the university to fall short of the minimum enrollment.

The fine for campuses who fall more than 2 percent under their enrollment targets "would depend upon how much [campus enrollment figures] were under," Bentley-Adler said.