As the deadlines for California State University (CSU) applications came to a close this month, the CSU system began pushing CSU campuses to increase enrollment rates for the 2016-2017 school year.

However, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong made up a proposal to be presented to the CSU Chancellor Timothy White this fall. This proposal will ask to keep Cal Poly at a steady enrollment, ensuring that Cal Poly would only be accepting about the same amount of students as those who are graduating.

With the elite staff, faculty and students our campus holds, I think this decision for steady enrollment will keep our students the way we like them: elite.

The “Learn By Doing” motto is one that sets our campus apart from others. Our small class sizes and one-on-one teacher interactions help us thrive as students. We are able to go out in our fields and gain real life experience to prepare us for the world ahead of us. With the close interactions we achieve with our professors, we are able to get personal, individual advice and critiques to advance not only our skills, but also our knowledge. Our small class sizes enable us to have these experiences within our education and produces Cal Poly graduates that are more than prepared for their careers.

The opportunities my peers and I have had through “Learn By Doing” is what sets us apart from our competitors in the field. With business students studying with “Big 4” companies in China for a week, wine and viniculture students working hands on with our personal vineyards, biology/chemistry students interacting with our cadaver lab, the “Learn By Doing” opportunities enhance every students' education. Our small class sizes enable professors to purchase class sets of expensive materials for hands on experiences such as foil stamp presses and saddle stitch machines within the graphic communications major. While these materials are accessible for a class size of 20, the expense of those for a class of 50 or more would be out of reach.

These are the qualities that keep Cal Poly unique and prosperous. With an increase in enrollment our one-on-one interactions will dwindle and our ability to “Learn By Doing” will drop. With increased class sizes Cal Poly won't be the school we all fell in love with. So, thank you President Armstrong for trying to keep our campus a place we can learn, do and love.