College applicants who qualify for admission to California State University (CSU) will get assured acceptance letters from at least one of CSU's 23 campuses.
Currently, about 3,000 students who meet all the requirements are rejected every year because the campuses they chose are already full. Under the state's new budget, though, students who cannot enter their desired campuses could be admitted to another venue with much more space. For the record, this change was modeled after the University of California (UC).
To better illustrate, Governor Jerry Brown recently introduced the new $125 billion budget that aims to increase the chances of a college acceptance letter. Per ABC 10, it "mandates" CSU's Board of Trustees to formulate a policy that would guarantee admission.
On the other hand, a separate policy will require CSU to provide "priority" to local students looking to go to universities located at home. The school administrators have until May 2018 to make these particular changes.
According to Mercury News, CSU requires students to have at least a 3.0 GPA to qualify. Nevertheless, those with lower grades are still eligible if they get certain scores on SAT and ACT. At the moment, it is still unclear how many students will be impacted.
For one, a lot of them have family obligations or jobs. These factors make moving to a different location in the state for collegiate education a little bit harder. As a matter of fact, out of the estimated 9,000 applicants, UC sends to Merced, less than 300 chose to enroll. Merced is the only campus in the system with space.
The CSU policy shift comes from the desire to increase graduation rates. Allegedly, among the nearly 480,000 students enrolled right now, only about 21 percent earn a degree in four years. While others graduate too, they do it longer than the average time to finish school. Officials reportedly want to raise it to 40 percent by 2025.
