Several weeks have passed since the beginning of the fall semester. I want to give you a brief update on San Diego State's budget situation and what, “through a glass, darkly,” we see ahead.

Even after a 40 percent increase in fees we have lost $47m in two years. These are base-budget, long-term cuts to which no one-time fix can be adequate. Consequently, we have tried to make base budget reductions in response. Most painfully, we have reduced the number of employees (principally through attrition and non-renewal) and are in the process of reducing our enrollment.

Where is California headed from here? Current signs are not good:

• California's unemployment rate rose to 12.2 percent in August;
• State receipts continue their downward trend;
• The California Department of Finance estimates that California will start its next fiscal year with a deficit of $7 billion, absent corrective actions.

What can we do to minimize the damage?

We are marshalling our reserves and furlough savings against the possibility of a mid-year correction. And, of course, given the trends I mentioned earlier, the prospects for next year's regular budget cycle are worrisome at best. Consequently, we are being very cautious.

Among the most difficult, but necessary, decisions we've had to make is to reduce our enrollment. With this year's reductions and those to come, SDSU will have 4,600 fewer students by next fall.

For many years, we've been forced to turn away CSU eligible applicants from outside our service area, now local-area students are affected as well.

All prospective students will apply to pre-majors (or undeclared) and will compete for the number of slots in that pre-major based on their CSU eligibility index. We will continue to honor the Sweetwater Compact and City Heights Collaborative Hoover High School agreements. And we will give extra eligibility index points to students from our service area as part of our continued commitment to local access.

It is too soon to know what our cutoff point will be (in effect, it is a function of qualified applications versus available spots), or the number of points that local students will receive, but our goal will be to maintain our ten year averages for diversity and for local vs. out-of-region first-time freshmen.

For more information on these new admissions policies, I encourage you to visit www.sdsu.edu/enrollmentinfo.

As SDSU manages its increasingly limited resources our challenges include:

• Maintaining as much accessibility and academic excellence as possible;
• Preserving our diversity;
• And, continuing to improve our graduation rate which is now above the national average and among the best for urban public universities.

Faced with these Draconian budget cuts we are struggling to preserve those advances and maintain the forward momentum we have achieved.

Thank you for your hard work and many sacrifices in support of San Diego State and the future of California.

Watch the video.