UC system with an eye on Californians
California’s college-bound students, their parents — and eventually, its politicians — have been demanding more in-state admissions into the vaunted University of California system for years now.
As demand for college plateaus at some schools around the nation, the desire to get into a UC school continues to grow from students not just here but around the world.
“This year, the system received nearly 211,000 freshman applications, up from 203,700 a year ago,” Michael Burke reports at EdSource.
The remarkable reputation of the University of California for potential students everywhere continues to be a success story in a state that has seen its golden sheen tarnish in the American imagination. But as students and their parents know, with the crazy competition for UC entry — essentially only perfect grades, test scores and extracurricular resumes need apply at the mostdesired campuses — that reputation has come at a cost. Out-of-state and international students pay about $30,000 more annually than do Californians. In order to feed the budget beast, admissions officials have in recent decades admitted way more nonstaters than they used to.
But this year, under pressure from constituents, members of the California Legislature allocated funding that allowed UC to enroll more instate students. Sacramento’s budget includes more than
$98 million to support enrollment growth of California residents, including $31 million to reduce enrollment of nonresidents at the highly covted UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego campuses by about 900 students, enrolling Californians instead.
All things being equal, we’d rather see a residency-blind admissions policy that continued to draw the most brilliant students from around the world to the Golden State. But all things are not equal. California taxpayers have invested in the properly stellar reputation of our public university for over 150 years now. It’s our university. That’s why we see it as a good thing that UC admitted a record number of instate freshman applicants and fewer out-of-state — 19% fewer — and international students — 12% fewer — for fall 2022.
It’s a complicated game. But so long as there are so many qualified Californians vying for entry, we want to give a few of them a leg up.