Rejected: San Jose State U Says ‘No’ to 4,400 Qualified Students

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:43:00 GMT

For the first time, San Jose State University has turned away qualified students from its freshmen class — 4,400 students who live outside the county, to be exact — saying that budget cutbacks have forced the university to scale back enrollment, reports the San Jose Mercury News (“San Jose State University Rejects 4,400 Prospective Freshmen,” March 25, 2009).

Transfer students who had just completed their first year at a community college or applicants who were seeking their second bachelor’s degree were among those denied admission.

“The situation is unprecedented,” said Veril Phillips, vice president for student affairs at San Jose State. “We’ve never had a situation where there were so many applicants and we were not able to accommodate them.”

School administrators were told on Nov. 20 by California State University system chancellor Charles Reed to cap enrollment since funding hadn’t kept pace with the growing number of applications. The CSU system received approximately 10 percent less funding than it needed to meet current demand, the Mercury News reported.

As a result, San Jose State was forced to accept only 29,750 students for the upcoming 2009-10 school year — a 9 percent dip from the 32,750 students the school enrolled last school year. Qualified students who applied prior to Nov. 20 were accepted, regardless of where they lived. After that date, however, only qualified Santa Clara County residents were admitted.

“Some students didn’t get in that applied. But most of them made other plans, to Cal State University-Monterey Bay or Cabrillo Community College,” said Julie Edwards Levy, manager of career services at Scotts Valley High School.

“They’re working with what they have to work with,” she added. “They’re not happy but they’re figuring it out.”

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State Higher Education Commission Urges Indiana Schools to Graduate 10,000 More Students a Year

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:58:00 GMT

A new plan unveiled Monday by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education calls for the state-supported colleges and universities in Indiana to graduate 10,000 more students with bachelor’s degrees each year — an increase of 33 percent — and to graduate these students in just four years, according to the Associated Press (“Indiana Seeks 10,000 More College Graduates a Year,” Sept. 9, 2008).

Under the proposed plan, Indiana would rank among the top 10 states in the nation for college degree completion by 2012. Indiana is currently 10th in the nation for the number of its high school graduates who enroll in college — 62 percent — but 57 percent of the state’s college students take six years to graduate and only 36 percent graduate within four years.

“We want more degrees and we want them on time,” said commission member Gerald Bepko, former chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

To motivate state schools to improve their four-year graduation rates — a move that the commission contends will reduce students’ college costs and student loan debt — the commission proposes that state funding be tied to a college’s degree completion rate rather than its enrollment growth.

“They used to say, ‘Give us more money and we’ll do a better job,’ ” said Stan Jones, state commissioner of higher education. “We’re saying, ‘Do a better job and we’ll give you more money.’ ”

The commission also hopes to build up the state’s community college system to make it easier, financially, for students to complete their bachelor’s degree in four years. The commission recommends that community colleges work to double their enrollment over the next 10 years and make the first two years of community college tuition free for students whose families earn less than $50,000 a year.

The plan would, in addition, make more families eligible for state financial aid by raising income limits.

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Rejected: San Jose State U Says ‘No’ to 4,400 Qualified Students

State Higher Education Commission Urges Indiana Schools to Graduate 10,000 More Students a Year