Northridge seeks to cut 300 incoming students

One of California’s largest public universities may tighten admission requirements, as Northridge State University Monday proposed reducing its enrollment by 1 percent.

More-strict academic standards for non-local incoming freshmen, undergraduate transfer students and graduate students were put forth by the school Monday. About 300 students per year would be turned away, a CSUN spokeswoman told City News Service.

The increased burden would make test scores, transcripts and other admission criteria harder for students outside the school’s local service area, mostly the San Fernando Valley, and for local students seeking to major in popular subjects.

Those subjects are Kinesiology, Music, Psychology and Cinema and Television Arts.

The university president called the reduction “impaction.”

“We are seeking to use impaction as an enrollment management tool carefully and judicially,” said CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison in a statement. It would start in 2016, if approved by the Cal State system.

Enrollment at the school has grown from 35,198 in 2009 to over 40,000 this year. The statewide CSU system is undergoing similar growing pains, and a CSUN spokeswoman said Northridge is one of the last of the statewide system to implement enrollment restrictions.

A legal notice published by the school, and obtained by CNS, shows that the University seeks to grant enrollment preferences to students in its local area. CSUN would allow students from that local area to enter CSUN under existing admission criteria.

But in-state students from outside the local area would face tougher standards.

The local area would include students in the districts served by 17 community college districts, including the high schools served by those colleges.

CSUN also proposes to trim some high schools from its local service area, including those in the Alhambra and South Pasadena school districts and the East District of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Those schools are in the Cal State Los Angeles local area, and traditionally we have looked the other way” in the admission process, CSUN spokeswoman Carmen Chandler told CNS. “The enrollment changes means we can no longer do that.”

Ventura County students would be directed to Cal State Channel islands.

The university scheduled three public hearings to take comment on the plan:

— 6-7 p.m. March 5 at the CSUN campus, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge;

— 6-7 p.m. March 9 at Glendale Community College, 1500 N. Verdugo Rd.; and

— 6-7 p.m. March 11 at Moorpark College, 7075 Campus Rd., Moorpark.

A fourth meeting will be held March 10 at a location to be determined, the CSUN spokeswoman said.

—City News Service