With budget-imposed enrollment limits, Chico State University is faced with what seems to be a paradox: Figuring how to keep the students it gets, and finding ways to get them out of school as soon as possible.

With the passage of the state budget this past week, the California State University system, which includes Chico State within its 23 campuses, found itself dealing with a 13 percent cut in its $2.6 billion general fund budget for the coming academic year.

The CSU, along with all other California agencies, also received the clear message that the fiscal belt will be tight for the foreseeable future.

"Of paramount importance is the unquestionable fact that California State University funding has declined to a level at which quality will erode; adding more students to already inadequate funding will only exacerbate this problem," said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed in a press release issued this week.

In order to keep that problem from getting worse, according to the chancellor's statement, the system must sharply limit enrollment growth.

At Chico State, officials have been working diligently for the last couple of years not only to limit growth but to actually push enrollment back from an all-time high reached in fall 2001, when 16,704 students showed up for classes.

The question follows, how do you curtail enrollment growth, fill the seats, and make space for new students, all at the same time.

Scott McNall, Chico State's interim president, says the answer, at least in part, involves keeping all the new freshmen who come through the door for the first time each fall going to school, and keep them moving toward graduation at a better pace.

McNall said about 18 percent of the students who enroll as freshmen, do not return to campus for their sophomore years.

Keeping students enrolled from year to year is called "retention" in academic circles. Chico's 18 percent drop-off between the freshman and sophomore years, "Puts us near the top (in terms of retention) in the CSU," according to McNall, but he still calls the enrollment loss "unacceptably high."

"Everything is relative, and yes compared to our sister campuses we are doing very well," said McNall, who is the university's provost and academic vice president, as well as temporary president.

At the same time he said, "We have to do a better job in retaining the people who come here."

McNall cited statistics on freshman alcohol abuse at Chico State as further evidence of problems.

According to a survey conducted on campus and focused on freshmen, 72 percent of the freshmen interviewed on weekend nights said they had consumed alcohol that day, and 44 percent said they had downed five or more drinks that day. Five drinks or more consumed in a single sitting is used as a definition for binge drinking.

Also, according to the figures, 23 percent of the students who took a breath alcohol test as part of the survey had blood alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher. In California a blood alcohol level of 0.08 is considered legally drunk for driving.

"There is little about the drug and alcohol data that would cause us to celebrate," conceded McNall.

"It (the survey) forces us to reflect on the initial experience we present to these students," he explained.

He said new students have to become academically involved in the university as soon as they arrive on campus.

The interim president said studies have shown that freshmen who participate in a number of existing programs are more likely to stay in school and to graduate in a timely manner.

Honors program classes that tend to be smaller, provide the students with better advising, and closer connections to the professors seem to help, as do "university life" classes which are semester-long classes aimed at orienting students and getting them involved in campus life, according to McNall.

McNall said the university has to find ways to keep more students coming back, and at the other end of the academically assembly line, move students more swiftly and surely to graduation.

According to statistics compiled by the university, on average less than 14 percent of the freshmen who enter school reach graduation in four years. By the fifth year of school, between 37 and 43 percent of the students who arrived as freshmen five years before have graduated.

Graduation becomes an important factor in a time of tight enrollment financing, because every student who leaves by graduation makes a space for a new freshman to come to campus.

McNall has called on Jim Moon, acting vice president for student affairs, Vice Provost Arno Rethans and Dennis Graham, university vice president for business and finance, to join him to develop strategies "to address the specific needs of entering students," and to have a plan ready by Dec. 15.

Once a plan is prepared, explained McNall, it will be presented to the new Chico State president. The current timetable calls for the new president to be appointed by the CSU board of trustees some time in January.