Summer Session Enrollment Limit Policy

Course Enrollment Cap Process

Summer Session is an increasingly important educational opportunity for students to make progress on their degrees toward timely (or earlier) graduation. Summer Session can reduce course impaction during the regular quarters, especially in courses where the number of available seats does not meet the demand for seats. Summer enrollments provide employment for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Growth of summer session offerings and enrollments is an important campus-wide priority. Summer Session will facilitate course enrollment caps necessary for course sponsoring agency success in offering their curriculum over the summer term as follows:

• Courses with a Senate-approved enrollment cap can only be exceeded if a course revision is approved by the Committee on Courses of Instruction (see deadlines here).
• Online courses developed as part of the annual online course development call are subject to the enrollment cap guidelines established in that process. If unique circumstances exist with one of these courses during any particular summer, they should be discussed with the Summer Session office.
• In all other cases, the provost/chair of a course sponsoring agency may request an enrollment cap in their units’ Call for Courses spreadsheet. Such caps will only be increased with the approval of the provost/chair of the course sponsoring agency.

Course sponsoring agencies and faculty are strongly encouraged to consider effects on pedagogy and facilities when determining whether an enrollment cap is absolutely necessary. Low enrollment caps may result in students pursuing opportunities elsewhere. Course support in the form of teaching assistants and readers will continue to be assigned in late May based on total enrollment in each course sponsoring agency.

Over-enrollment and Dropping:

Consistently, students inflate enrollment numbers by enrolling in more classes than they plan to take.Some students plan on summer until they get their spring grades, then change plans.  Others enroll, get their financial aid projection, then drop everything.  

Please keep this documented trend in mind when setting enrollment caps.  When caps are set too low, many students cannot enroll during Spring Quarter. Then when classes begin and lots of seats open, it’s too late for the students who have made other summer plans.  

Due to the nature of summer enrollment behaviors, we request that “no enrollment limit” can be used whenever possible or higher limits to allow for dropping. No, or high, caps are critical to accommodate students considering summer classes.