CSULB Online 49er: v9n49: Stringent standards fix Tidal Wave

Editorial Staff

Phil Witte
Editor in Chief

Lyndsey Shinoda
Managing Editor

Michael Watanabe
News Editor

Jamie Rogers
City Editor

Christine Shin
Diversions Editor

Mike Haubrich
Sports Editor

Cara Gavcia
Photo Editor

Chris Burnett
News Editorial Director

Raul Reis
News Operations Director

William Mulligan
Publisher

Gerard Greenidge
Webmaster

Stringent standards fix Tidal Wave

By Sarah Langford
On-line Forty-Niner

There is no doubt about it. The student population at Cal State Long Beach is exploding. More than 2,000 more students are studying at CSULB this year than last year, with next year's enrollment expected to the same. At the same time, the Chancellor's Office has implemented a partial hiring freeze as well as budget cuts at all California State University campuses, limiting the amount of new part-time teaching and full-time administrative staff hired.

To balance the amount of funding with the number of students, the university will begin to raise admission standards for applicants outside of the local area in fall 2002.

CSULB President Robert Maxson announced at the last Academic Senate meeting that students living within an eight-mile radius of CSULB will continue to be accepted based on the regular CSU admission standards.

However, for students living farther away only the top one-fifth of next year's graduating class will be admissible, compared to the top one-third of seniors that were admitted to CSULB this year, Maxson said.

"The fact is that our campus is at maximum capacity," he said at the Academic Senate meeting. "For out-of-town students we must raise admission standards in order to keep enrollment where it is now and encourage those students to attend the CSU campus closest to them.

"For about 80 percent of next year's freshman class, admission standards will be higher," Maxson said.

In addition to raising admission standards, the university is retaining all tenure-track faculty, since both the Chancellor and President's offices have made it clear the hiring freeze does not in any way affect tenure-track faculty.

The hiring freeze applies only toward part-time teaching positions and administrative and supportive staff. Furthermore, the vice president may make exceptions to the freeze on a case-by-case basis.

"The university is doing everything possible to maintain the quality of teaching at its campuses by continuing to hire full-time tenure-track faculty," said Clara Potes-Fellow, manager of media relations for the Chancellor's Office.

This means the amount of qualified full-time professors should continue to increase in proportion to students on campus, Potes-Fellow said.

From the California Faculty Association's perspective, the budget cuts this year and the current partial hiring freeze will affect the entire CSU system.

"Proposition 98 protects K to 12 schools from budget cuts," said Martin Fiebert, president of the Long Beach chapter of the CFA. "We're hoping to persuade the governor not to cut funding from the CSU system in the future, or at least to minimize cuts."

Fiebert said that legislative lobbying has been most effective in the past to accomplish things important to the CFA.

"In the spring we have a 'lobby day,' when CFA representatives from all 23 campuses travel to Sacramento and present specific measures to their representative lawmakers," Fiebert said.

"The increase in enrollment this year, when combined with the budget cuts and hiring freeze, will be tough on our campus," he said. "However, it looks like it will only get worse next year. We should look at this year as just a taste of things to come."