UC confronts hurdles as school year begins
Budget balanced, but housing and diversity woes linger
UC Berkeley, flagship campus of the University of California, is best known for its superlatives: the most Nobel laureates of any public institution. The most Peace Corps volunteers in history. And most famously, unparalleled student activism.
But as thousands of brainy undergrads, grads and professors stream back to class, they’re facing other, less welcome extremes, including the worst housing crisis of the nine undergraduate UC campuses and the lowest proportion of underrepresented minority students.
What they no longer need to worry about is the steepest budget deficit in campus history, a $150 million gap revealed in 2016 by the prior chancellor.
“The budget is balanced,” campus Chancellor Carol Christ told The Chronicle as the new year began. “It makes the whole community feel more futureoriented. We’re able to
dream big dreams.”
Among those dreams is to vanquish the steep decline in underrepresented groups — black, Latino and Native American students — since 1996, when voters approved Proposition 209 and stopped statefunded schools from considering ethnicity in admissions.
Before then, black students, for example, made up 7% of freshmen admitted to UC Berkeley from California. By 1998, just 3% of instate admissions went to black students. This year, the figure stood at 4%, or 391 of the 9,634 California high school seniors admitted.
Overall, 26% of California students admitted to the freshman class this year were underrepresented groups: 2,091 Latino, 391 black, and 66 Native American students, about the same as last year.
UC Berkeley is not the most selective campus in the system (UCLA is). Yet no UC campus has a lower ratio of underrepresented groups.
“I know that some members of our community feel we talk a good game about improving diversity, but haven’t backed up our words with appropriate actions,” Christ said in December as she unveiled her Undergraduate Student Diversity Project. She cited Prop. 209, but said: “We cannot and will not use that as an excuse.”
One of the project’s goals is to become a “HispanicServing Institution” within the next decade, a designation that opens the door to federal grants. But overall, the plan calls for better ways to recruit and enroll far more people of color.
“The demographics of this campus as they stand are heartbreaking and alienating, and make it harder for the few underrepresented minorities at this school to succeed,” said senior Amma SarkodeeAdoo, 21, president of the Associated Students of the UC, the student government on campus.
But SarkodeeAdoo, who is black, said it was “comforting to know that this is a priority for the administration” and hoped to see tangible improvements from Christ’s Diversity Project.
One strategy is the African American Initiative Scholarship, now in its second year, which offers a full ride to qualified students. Campus spokesman Dan Mogulof hastened to say the singleethnicity program “is about financial aid, not admissions.” But just in case, it’s held by the private San Francisco Foundation, not by UC.
Another effort is a new partnership with one of the country’s most effective mentorships for underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and math. The Meyeroff program, operating for 30 years at the University of Maryland, is credited with helping black and Latino students earn 300 doctorates, 253 master’s, 130 M.D. degrees and 54 combined M.D./Ph.D.s.
That’s significant for engineering Professor Oliver O’Reilly, president of the Academic Senate, who said that “it’s impossible to be a faculty member and not be aware of and concerned about the lack of underrepresented minority students on campus.”
UC Berkeley admits about 30% more black California freshmen than it enrolls — 391 vs 300 — partly because private universities entice them with better deals.
But affordability isn’t the only reason some students shy away. Housing is a huge issue. The campus offers living quarters to just 26% of undergrads, the lowest rate at UC. By contrast, UCLA houses nearly 48%, and Santa Cruz 49%.
“Trying to figure out your housing situation is super stressful,” said senior Sarah Abdeshahian, 20, head of Cal Democrats. As a freshman, Abdeshahian skipped classes to attend open houses so she wouldn’t be homeless as a sophomore. “If you wait three hours, it would be gone.”
Eventually, Abdeshahian landed a onebedroom apartment and two roommates. Her monthly share for the crowded digs: $850. Plus, she said, “it was old and moldy.”
Abdeshahian turned to cooperative housing this year, selecting one of 20 houses run by the nonprofit Berkeley Student Cooperative. She’ll live in Cloyne Court with about 150 other students and pay $750 a month — including food. But while the coops offer relief for cashstrapped students, wait lists are long. “I know people who apply over a year before,” said Abdeshahian, who got priority as a lowincome, firstgeneration student.
Students aren’t the only ones frustrated. Back in 2005, the campus warned the city of Berkeley to expect a lot more students in town — 33,450 by 2020. But enrollment already exceeds 42,500.
“The city claims we’ve made the quality of life deteriorate with 9,000 more students,” Christ said.
So in June, the city sued. It had been charging UC Berkeley roughly $2 million a year to mitigate the impact of students. Now Mayor Jesse Arreguín said
it should be a lot more.
The lawsuit, ironically, has stalled a $126 million project to build 150 faculty apartments at the corner of Hearst and La Loma avenues. Because the suit names that project, it can’t get financing.
Meanwhile, the chancellor wants to build housing on nine other sites in the three years she plans to remain on the job. Sites include crimeriddled People’s Park, and the corner of Oxford Street and University Avenue, a gift from an anonymous donor.
O’Reilly, the Academic Senate president, praised Christ’s efforts: “The lack of affordable housing in the Bay Area has certainly been felt by staff, students, and faculty.”
For years, everyone also felt the sharp pain of money woes. As other campuses emerged, bruised, from the recession, in 2016, prior Chancellor Nicholas Dirks revealed a $150 million gap. UC Berkeley had ventured into costly construction — including the new Memorial Stadium and athletic center, which plunged the campus into longterm debt. Cuts to undergraduate education followed, as did hundreds of layoffs. Today, union leaders remain angry that workers are slowly being replaced by contractors.
Christ became chancellor in 2017 and pledged to wrestle down the debt mainly by raising revenue, not cutting programs, a strategy that seems to have worked. She brought in $635 million last year, a oneyear record. Her team added more than a dozen moneymaking extension courses for nonstudents — from data visualization to marketing classes in Spanish — and plumped up degree programs that pay for themselves, including a new one in cyber security.
To be sure, UC headquarters helped with $40 million, a loan UC Berkeley will repay over 10 years. The state also bestowed $25 million. The stadium debt still weighs heavily over the campus, but now it has the cash to make payments.
Intercollegiate athletics still bleeds money, as it has for years. Football and other sports lost more than $19 million last year alone. But for the first time, campus officials say they’ll balance that budget. Athletic Director Jim Knowlton and Christ will announce details in September.
Not everyone is applauding. Leaders of the Berkeley Faculty Association, a watchdog group, say Christ is steering the public university too heavily toward private funding.
“We applaud Chancellor Christ’s dedication and thoughtful leadership, but wish that she were a stronger advocate for restoring public funding,” cochairs Wendy Brown, a political science professor, and Celeste Langan, an associate professor of English, said in a statement. “Public divestment from education has been bad for democracy, society, economy and the individual. On this issue, the chancellor seems out of step.”
UC Berkeley also begins the year not quite free of taint from the college admissions scandal, “Operation Varsity Blues,” a federal fraud investigation that nabbed 33 parents and others. One was a UC Berkeley parent. David Sidoo has been charged with paying $100,000 for an impostor to take the SAT for his son Jordan, who enrolled in 2014 and was briefly on the Cal crew team. Jordan Sidoo’s LinkedIn profile says he graduated in May 2018. Yet, unlike elsewhere, there were no allegations that Cal coaches accepted bribes.
Christ said the campus had patched up such weaknesses in athletics five years earlier: names of athletes who rarely play are now checked against donor lists to flag quid pro quo admissions, and three committees verify athletic applicants.
But avoiding fake testtakers is tougher.
“There’s no way to do that,” Christ said. “If someone misrepresents themselves, it’s very, very hard. You just don’t know.”