\n<\/p>\n
There was a 9 percent increase in enrollments from the pilot county as compared to the previous CSU freshman class.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | gemenacom, ghoststone, Jose Gonzalez Buenaposada and vi73777\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The California State University system launched a direct admissions pilot last year, offering qualifying high school seniors at school districts in Riverside County admission to 10 of its institutions. The program turned out to be an unqualified success: The number of graduates from the district who enrolled at a CSU campus this fall jumped 9\u00a0percent.<\/p>\n
Now the system is expanding the program, thanks to legislation signed last month that will allow CSU to extend offers to students in every school district in the state starting in the 2026\u201327 admission cycle. The offers will grant admission to 16 of the 22 CSU campuses; the six most selective institutions will not participate. <\/p>\n
The program ties in with the system\u2019s goal of creating access to higher education for all Californians, said April Grommo, CSU\u2019s assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management. <\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to proactively inform students that they are eligible for the CSU has provided a lot of positive results,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had a lot of students and families that did not realize they were eligible to go to a four-year university.\u201d <\/p>\n
With this program, California joins a cohort of about 15 states that offer students some form of direct, guaranteed or simplified admissions. The intent is to streamline the admissions process and make students aware of institutions they may not have otherwise considered, as well as to bolster institutions\u2019 enrollment. Such programs have proven broadly successful, according to Taylor Odle, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy work, in partnership with states and national nonprofit organizations, shows that direct admissions programs can not only increase students\u2019 early-college going behaviors but also subsequently raise their college enrollment outcomes,\u201d Odle wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cThese benefits are particularly large for students of color, those who will be the first in their family to attend college, and those from lower-income communities. States who have implemented direct admissions also consistently report higher enrollment levels following implementation.\u201d <\/p>\n While different states use the term \u201cdirect admissions\u201d slightly differently, Odle defined a true direct admissions program as \u201cguaranteed (students are admitted to college; not an invitation to apply), universal (all students can participate), proactive (students don\u2019t need to do anything to receive a direct admissions offer), simplified (students don\u2019t need to apply; simply \u2018claim their spot\u2019 via a streamlined process), and free (no cost).\u201d <\/p>\n In CSU\u2019s case, qualified students\u2014those who meet the system\u2019s requirements regarding the courses they took in high school and who have a minimum 2.5 grade point average\u2014receive mailers informing them that they have been admitted to all 16 participating campuses. <\/p>\n In the Riverside County pilot program, about 17,400 graduating seniors received admission offers. The system saw a 15\u00a0percent year-over-year increase in students from the county who completed an application for a CSU institution\u2014direct admits don\u2019t complete the full application, just a truncated version of it in order to accept the offer of admission\u2014and led to the subsequent bump in enrollees. The majority ended up at Cal State San Bernardino, the closest campus to Riverside County\u2014across the state, most CSU students attend an institution within 50 miles of their home\u2014but others traveled farther, in some cases to study in specialized programs. <\/p>\n Along with the direct admissions offers, the system also launched a series of events to expose Riverside County students to CSU\u2019s different campuses and programs. Called Discover CSU Days, the events featured panels of current students from Riverside County. <\/p>\n \u201cA lot of Riverside County students are first-generation and low-income, so we talked to them about why the CSU is a good option for them,\u201d said Grommo. <\/p>\n Students could enroll that same day, with some campuses waiving housing and tuition deposits for those who did. <\/p>\n Odle said that with so many institutions reporting positive outcomes from their direct admissions programs, such initiatives may soon become the \u201cnew norm.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cMore states and systems of higher education should be in the business of identifying challenges, designing and implementing pilot programs to address them, rigorously studying them, and then making expansion decisions (like this) based on evidence,\u201d he wrote. \u201cGiven CSU\u2019s access and service mission to the state, it makes sense that it joins a variety of other systems nationally at implementing this evidence-based practice to raise enrollments and reduce gaps in access.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a 9 percent increase in enrollments from the pilot county as compared to the previous CSU freshman class. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | gemenacom, ghoststone, Jose Gonzalez Buenaposada and vi73777\/iStock\/Getty Images The California State University system launched a direct admissions pilot last year, offering qualifying high school seniors at school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[8227,667,12207,9462,199,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-33533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-admissions","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-direct","11":"tag-embraces","12":"tag-state","13":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}