Want to Go Back to School? Not So Fast

Here's some bad news for those of you out of work with a plan to go back to school.  It's also a bummer for graduating seniors who decided to take a semester off before starting college.

California State University says it will stop accepting nearly all student applications for next spring to help offset deep budget cuts to the state's 23-campus system.
     
CSU officials said ccmpuses on the quarter system have stopped accepting applications for the winter term.

CSU, which has about 450,000 students, typically admits more than 35,000 freshmen, undergraduate transfer and graduate students during the spring term.   Those people are out of luck.
     
The decision to close spring admissions is part of its overall strategy to reduce student enrollment to cope with a 20 percent reduction in state funding.

The CSU Board of Trustees is expected to vote on the plan in two weeks.

Not all the news is bad for Cal students. Earlier this week, California State University announced it will defer fee payments for students who have not received financial aid because of the state's budget crisis.
     
The state controller's office began issuing IOUs this month because the state faces a $26 billion budget deficit and is in danger of running out of cash.

One of the institutions receiving the IOUs is the California Student Aid Commission, which distributes awards known as Cal Grants to more than 60,000 low-income CSU students.

CSU will defer fee payments for this year's summer and fall terms for students who don't get their state money.

Those students will not have to pay those fees until the aid commission begins disbursing Cal Grant funds to campuses.