Applications flood California State University

On Monday, the deadline passed for applications to most of the 23 California State University campuses. Administrators said today they received a record number of online applications.

Cal State received more than 600,000 thousand applications for college admission next fall. Over 70,000 applications arrived 24 hours before the deadline. Ten thousand of those showed up between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on the final day. A handful of Cal State campuses are still accepting applications, while others are placing late applicants on waiting lists.

Officials say a surge in community college applicants, along with cost cutting to reduce system-wide enrollment by 40,000 students in the next two years, contributed to the deluge.

Students admitted to Cal State for the fall of 2010 will find campuses that offer fewer classes, charge higher student fees, and burden instructors with larger workloads. Cal State administrators are pushing a budget request in Sacramento that they say will soften the budget cuts lawmakers approved in recent years.