CSUB reduces barriers for absent students looking to return to university

Students who have been absent for years can now re-enroll without reapplying

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 26^th, 2022

Former California State University, Bakersfield students looking to resume their education at the university can now do so more easily.

This past spring, the Academic Senate approved a revised CSUB’s student re-entry policy that allow students who have been absent from the university for up to three years to be able to re-enroll without having to reapply.

Prior to this change, students were only eligible to re-enroll if they had been absent for up to a year.

“This is such a great initiative on our campus, a great policy change,” said Dr. Debra Jackson, associate vice president for academic affairs and dean of academic programs. “Reapplying to the university requires both time and financial resources. I’m so proud that our Academic Senate revised the policy to reduce this barrier to students continuing their education.”

Students need to be in good academic standing to take advantage of the new policy. Those who aren’t in good standing must still go through the regular process of being reinstated to the university.

CSUB began looking into changing the policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In December, the Academic Senate approved a temporary suspension of the policy to allow any absent student in good standing who dropped out during the pandemic to be able to re-enroll without reapplying to the university.

Dr. Jackson said CSUB decided to pursue a permanent change after seeing CSU Stanislaus successfully implement a similar one a couple years ago.

That university originally allowed any student to re-enroll no matter how long they had been absent, but found in a subsequent study that the policy had the greatest impact on students who had been absent for up to three years. Due to this, CSUB leaders decided to impose a three-year limit for the university’s policy.

Carson Vollmer — CSUB’s new president and CEO of Associated Students, Inc. — said he believes the revised policy is already having a significant impact for returning students and will continue to do so in the coming years.

“Accessibility to higher education is important, and I am glad action was taken to help encourage students to continue their educational journey,” he said. “I hope this policy change encourages those who left the university to return and finish the degrees they were pursuing.”

'A helping hand'

The new policy comes amid an enrollment push at the university that kicked off in January. After the temporary suspension of the re-entry policy was approved by the Academic Senate in December, the Enrollment Management division launched a significant outreach campaign targeting students who were absent in the fall 2021 semester to encourage them to re-enroll for spring.

CSUB staff — as well as some current students — contacted 478 absent students as part of the effort, which resulted in 104 of them returning for the spring semester and another 94 who re-enrolled this fall.

“That’s a 41% re-enrollment rate — that’s phenomenal,” said Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Dr. Dwayne Cantrell. “We didn’t expect so many would want to re-enroll.”

The division is continuing the effort this academic year and is making it a part of its framework.

“Each semester, we want to see who did not enroll and see what we can do to help get them re-engaged and ready to complete their degrees,” Dr. Cantrell said. “We’ve already started reaching out to students who were previously enrolled but haven’t enrolled this fall.”

Dr. Cantrell believes the permanent policy change the Academic Senate approved in the spring will provide additional assistance to absent students coming back to campus.

“This policy will provide a smoother transition for our students,” he said. “We all get bumps in life that takes place, and students need to be able to take care of those without having more barriers in the way of obtaining their degrees.”

Dr. Jackson said it’s critical for CSUB to help students resume their education not only because a degree can lead to better career options but also improve social mobility. One of the things that she said research has shown is students who start college but don’t finish are more likely to accumulate a significant amount of debt that they are unable to pay off.

“Going to college is a good thing, unless you start college but don’t complete college,” she said. “It hurts you more than helps you, because it requires an investment of financial resources that, until you get that degree completed, you don’t have the resources to pay back, so you can’t afford to go to college until you graduate, in a sense. If you start but don’t finish, you are more harmed than if you had never gone at all.”

Many students dropped out during the pandemic because of work and family responsibilities. However, Dr. Cantrell said he knows most of those students want to come back to CSUB but just need some help.

“Students have a desire to be here — the question is how can they stay here?” he said. “We’ve had students who have lost family members and had their lives disrupted. We need to give them a helping hand for them to get the support they need to graduate. We’re being very aggressive in our efforts to re-engage and support our students.”

It’s important for students to understand that just because they’ve dropped out, that doesn’t mean they can’t return in the future, Dr. Jackson said.

“If you have something going on in your life that interrupts your studies and you have to stop out, we want to make sure you know that the door is still open to finish your degree, that we want you to come back."