CSUN University News Clippings

UC Berkeley to admit more out-of-state students

(October 21, 2009)

By Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

Starting next fall, UC Berkeley will admit hundreds of additional out-of-state residents and international students instead of Californians as a way to make up for state budget cuts.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Tuesday that his campus will be admitting as many as 600 fewer “unfunded” California students a year to offset a 20 percent cut from Sacramento. Those slots will instead go to out-of-staters.

The problem is that the state picks up much of the university’s cost of educating California students – only it’s not paying for as many students as it used to. Nonresidents, on the other hand, pay their own, higher tuitions that actually cover UC’s cost of educating them.

Birgeneau said he understands that people will be angry that Berkeley will be freezing out Californians in favor of students from elsewhere. But, he said, “that upset needs to be directed to Sacramento.”

At present, about 14 percent of the 13,000 freshmen who win admission to Berkeley each year are nonresidents. A task force of faculty and administrators recently recommended pushing that number up to 23.2 percent for the fall semester.

We’re told the idea is also being looked at for both UCLA and UC San Diego which, like Berkeley, attract large numbers of out-of-state applicants.

UC President Mark Yudoff’s office insisted that boosting out-of-state admissions was not contrary to the university’s commitment to guarantee enrollment for the top 12 percent of California high school students. But given the budget cuts, the system will be admitting 2,500 fewer in-state students next year, regardless of whether it takes more from elsewhere.

“Obviously, it’s not what we want to do,” said UC Berkeley Materials Science and Engineering Professor Fiona Doyle, a member of the faculty and administrative committee that made the admissions recommendation. “It’s a compromise, very much so.”

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who has been a persistent critic of UC spending policies, called the move “extremely frustrating” and said it was time for the university to stop blaming Sacramento for all its problems.

“All of us taxpayers thought we would have UC to educate our children,” Yee said. “But more and more, it seems to take care of other individuals – be it high-paid executives or out-of-state students.”

Publication: San Francisco Chronicle