With an influx of transfers, CSUMB must cover costs the state won’t.

More than two decades since CSU Monterey Bay was carved out of a decommissioned military base, the university is becoming a victim of its own success: More students want to attend the university than it has funding to enroll.

The university has pledged to accept all students with associate degrees for transfer from Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties – even if CSUMB must eat the cost of tuition the state of California doesn’t subsidize.

CSUMB received a surge in mid-year transfer applications for the Spring 2017 semester, with roughly 1,100 students from across the state looking to start classes there on Jan. 23. Of those, more than 500 mid-year transfer applications came from CSUMB’s three-county service area – 350 more students than the university planned to enroll.

“It’s a good problem to have. It shows we are becoming a first destination of a lot of students,” says Ronnie Higgs, vice president of Student Affairs and Enrollment Services at CSUMB.

California funding was slated to cover the enrollment of 150 in-state mid-year transfer students to CSUMB for the Spring 2017 semester. CSUMB has accepted all 500 applicants from the tri-county area, and Higgs expects 67 percent of those students to enroll. This will cost the university up to $150,000 for the Spring 2017 semester, Higgs says.

Part of the increase in local transfer applications stems from the partnerships CSUMB is building with the region’s four community colleges: Cabrillo College in Aptos, Gavilan College in Gilroy, Hartnell College in Salinas and Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey.

The partnership between Hartnell College and CSUMB affects the most students. More than half of Hartnell students who transfer to four-year schools go to CSUMB, making the community college the university’s largest feeder school.

“Historically you see students transfer to other schools like CSU Fresno and San Jose State,” says Mark Sanchez, dean of student affairs at Hartnell. “We didn’t expect the number to be so significant so quickly. CSUMB is becoming more and more of a preferred choice for Hartnell students and I don’t think that is a trend that will go away soon.”

In the past three years, the student population at Hartnell has gone from 13,000 to 17,000 – evidence, Sanchez says, of increasing demand at both schools.

The CSU application deadline was Nov. 30, and while application numbers aren’t yet available, administrators at both Harnell and CSUMB expect continued increases in the Monterey Bay area. But the university doesn’t expect to continue digging into its own pockets to cover additional costs of regional students.

The majority of students at CSUMB currently come from outside the tri-county area. As applications from local students increase in coming years, the administration plans to enroll fewer students from outside the area, in order to stay within state funding limits.