SAN MARCOS ---- Cal State San Marcos assured North County high school and community college students Thursday that there will be room for them at the university this fall despite increasing demand for classroom seats and diminishing financial resources.

The assurances, which also apply to aspiring CSUSM students in Southwest Riverside County, came as the university additionally announced that it expects to curtail enrollment to students from outside the region.

The development comes as Cal State San Marcos reports a 45 percent surge in applications for fall 2004 over the same semester of 2003. Some 9,000 students have applied for 1,600 spaces, officials said.

Letters of acceptance are to start going out to students March 1. They are to be asked to state by May 1 if they intend to enroll at Cal State San Marcos for the fall semester. Students can check their admission status at www.csusm.edu/smartweb.

The mode is no-growth, said admissions director Cherine Heckman. "We are not adding new students to the university ---- only replacing those who graduate or who choose not to return," she noted in a prepared statement released Thursday. In an interview, she added, "Obviously, we're not where we want to be because of the budget situation ... but we're taking as much of Southern California as much as we can."

Said Cal State San Marcos spokesman Rick Moore, "The point we would like the community to know is that we have accepted the local people. I want to reassure people who live in this area that the university has been able to accept the residents of this region ... We are able to meet the needs of this region."

Calling the situation unfortunate, CSUSM Vice President for Student Affairs Francine Martinez said the moves are needed to preserve the quality of education on the campus. "... We look forward to the time when we can once again invite many more students to join this community of learners," she said.

Admissions director Heckman said that CSUSM is giving preference in admissions to students from high schools and community colleges in southwest Riverside and those north of Highway 56 in North County. The approach, she said, carries on the CSU system's traditional mission of affording access to all who qualify, but in this case to local qualified people and then for access to the sole regional university.

"Access has not been compromised at all for students in North County (and southwest Riverside)," she said.

CSUSM reported receiving 1,358 applications from students in North County and southwest Riverside who want to enter as freshmen in fall 2004 and 1,269 who applied to enroll as transfer students. Not all who are admitted eventually enroll.

The university said it also expects to be able to accommodate most of the applicants from Imperial County and parts of San Diego County outside North County. Some 2,800 applications have come in from those areas.

In 2003, about one in three students admitted to the freshman class accepted CSUSM's offer to enroll. Some three out of four admitted as transfer students enrolled.

Heckman, who leaves CSUSM this month after nine years to become a vice president at Mayville State University in North Dakota, said the budget squeeze and the no-growth mode are barring 500 otherwise-qualified students from entering San Marcos in the fall, including some 200 freshmen and 300 community college transfers. Those would have been students who come from areas such as Orange County and elsewhere throughout the state and nation.

CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed has said that if the budget proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January becomes law, the 23-campus Cal State system would have to turn away some 20,000 qualified students in the fall.

CSU undergraduates are also looking at a 10 percent tuition hike under the governor's proposal.