Concerned that San Diego State's action will lead to similar access problems across the cash-strapped CSU system, California's Legislative Analyst's Office is calling for the state to guarantee the right of all qualified students to enroll in their local CSU campus.
In a report released Monday, the legislative analyst urged lawmakers to take steps - through state law or by amending the advisory Master Plan for Higher Education - to ensure that qualified local students aren't turned away from their local campus.
"Each campus wants to take the best and brightest students, and I'm sympathetic to that argument," said Steve Boilard, director of higher education at the Legislative Analyst's Office. "In an ideal world, that looks good.
"But the reality is that these campuses have more applicants than they can handle - so if students have to be turned away, we say the first thing you should do is fill slots with local students."
CSU has been forced in recent years to limit enrollment as campus budgets have shrunk, even as applicants and demand for popular majors have increased.
The most common approach has been to hold nonlocal applicants to a higher academic standard for enrollment than local applicants. This approach is used at 15 popular CSU campuses, including San Francisco State and San Jose State.
For decades, only one CSU campus - California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo - was so selective that local students were given no priority. At the other 22 campuses, qualified applicants from local high schools were a shoo-in.
Neither state law nor the Master Plan ever required that practice, and San Diego State became the first to revoke its policy.
"We are being forced to ration educational opportunity," San Diego State President Stephen Weber told the San Diego Tribune. "At some point, I've got to place my bet on the student that's most likely ... to succeed and graduate."
Last fall, nearly 4,800 San Diego area high school seniors applied and qualified for enrollment at San Diego State. More than a third, 1,740, were turned away.
But the legislative analyst's report says students should not have to leave home to go to school.
"We believe that ensuring local access to all eligible students is more important than maintaining equal admissions criteria for all applicants," the report says.
Assemblyman Marty Block, D-San Diego, chairman of the Higher Education Committee and a former dean of San Diego State, introduced a bill last year to require CSU to give priority to local students. It didn't get far. But another Block bill requiring public hearings and a waiting period for changes impacting local access became law Jan. 1.
"It's critical that the Legislature step up and require the CSU to meet its core mission, which is serving local students," Block said Monday.
But campuses offer no guarantees.
San Jose State University, with about half of its students from local high schools, is among the most popular campuses in the state.
"We've stuck with it this far," said spokeswoman Pat Lopes Harris. "But I don't want to say we'll never compromise the local area guarantee."
At San Francisco State, freshman Champagne Francis said she would prefer that CSU admit many more students from far-flung places.
"I would disagree with putting more restrictions" on nonlocal students, she said.
Francis, it turns out, is from Fresno.
"Sometimes," she said, "you just need to get away from home."
The legislative analyst's full report, "The Master Plan at 50: Guaranteed Regional Access Needed for State Universities," can be found at links.sfgate.com/ZKWC.
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