Spring Enrollment at CSUN Near Capacity

Spring enrollment will drop slightly at Cal State Northridge, but campus officials said the university would still be close to capacity for the second consecutive semester.

Final enrollment numbers for the spring semester, which started Monday, have yet to be calculated, said CSUN director of academic resources Spero Bowman. Bowman estimated the number of students this term at about 26,000.

That figure represents a decrease of about 1,200 students from the fall, which Bowman characterized as a normal enrollment pattern.

The student population rose to 27,189 in the fall, an increase of 2,174 students from the previous spring. That steep rise forced administrators to stop accepting applications for this spring in October, barely a month into the fall term.

The university’s capacity is not determined solely by physical space, Bowman said, but by a target enrollment figure derived from several factors, the most important being the amount of funding provided by the state.

“Demand is really up on our campus and throughout the CSU system,” Bowman said. “We’re just trying to provide as many course opportunities for our students as possible.”

In December, a state report ranked CSUN first among CSU campuses in attracting new students. Although the school’s student population remains smaller than it was prior to the January 1994 earthquake, it has grown steadily over the past two years, officials said.