Before I begin, I think it’s necessary to state that I am a junior in high school, which means that I will graduate in the year 2013.
It’s the general consensus that there is a hierarchy of colleges here in California. The bottom tier is populated by community colleges, the middle tier is populated by Cal State’s, and the upper tier is populated by the UCs. The goal, of course, is for a student to achieve his or her maximum potential and enroll in a respectable school.
However, this isn’t as easy of a feat as it was a decade ago. With the [well known] financial crisis California schools are currently in, in-state admission is getting progressively more difficult. More out-of-state students are applying and getting admitted, while in-state students are not. This trend rings especially true in the UC’s, which recruit more students out-of-state to earn the extra tuition they pay. In fact, UC Berkeley’s 30 percent fall freshman class of 2011 were international or out-of-state students. It also doesn’t help that UC Berkeley is ranked as the No. 1 most expensive (on all-in-cost) public university.
Cal State’s were supposed to be the mediator for this dilemma. Students who couldn’t get into a UC, and didn’t want to take their chances in heading to community college and transferring, would apply to a Cal State, and either transfer from there or earn a full degree. The Cal State educational system, despite the stigma, is still reputable, and many successful individuals hail from a Cal State school (Google this for a proper list).
However, if this proposal to freeze 2013 freshmen admission passes through, the outcome will be horrendous. Regardless of whether one campus closes admission, or multiples campuses do, it will set forth a malignant portent for things to come. Schools were instituted to grant an education to anyone that wished to receive one. And now, in our modern society, an education is what brings forth the future to the common man.
Essentially, this prioritizes the short term protection of a college over the long term future of a generation. About 16,000 students typically transfer to a Cal State each spring – on top of that, CSU receives more than 600,000 applications yearly. Denying these students admission will do no good for California, nor help the students themselves.
If colleges can simply freeze admission to deal with funding cuts, it compromises the entire premise of public education. Schools aren’t businesses, and they shouldn’t be run that way.
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