Faculty members and students on the campuses of California State University are upset over a plan to exempt out-of-state students from an admissions freeze next spring while still barring enrollment by California residents, reports the Los Angeles Times. Nonresidents pay higher tuition rates than their in-state peers do. A spokesman for the university system told the newspaper that if a campus had the capacity to enroll students who are not subsidized by the state, those extra tuition dollars could benefit state residents. Critics of the plan said it set a bad precedent, one that wrongly excludes Californians.
Updated (8/17/2012, 3:56 p.m.): The university on Friday issued a statement from Ephraim P. Smith, executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer, addressing the controversy. The statement said the university had closed admissions for the 2013 spring semester because of several years of state-budget cuts. “What CSU is not doing is displacing Californians in favor of higher paying nonresident students, and there is no policy encouraging campuses to do so,” Mr. Smith wrote. “At their discretion, campuses that have the capacity in underenrolled programs to admit new nonresident students may choose to do so. However, the number of students in this category is very limited.”
