UC to Expand Admissions for California Students Amid Backlash Over Access

Amid complaints that the University of California is excluding too many Californian applicants in favor of foreign nationals and out-of-state students willing to pay hefty tuitions, the UC Board of Regents approved plans to boost local enrollment.

All UC campuses will expand enrollment of California undergraduates over the next three years under a plan approved this month by UC’s governing board.

UC President Janet Napolitano’s plan increases enrollment of state resident undergraduates by 10,000 over that time span, including 5,000 freshmen and transfer students next year.

The move comes after the university system announced a record-low acceptance rate for California applicants in the spring. According to The Los Angeles Times, about 60% of 103,117 California applicants were admitted to UC schools down from about 63% the year before and about 79% in 1999.

“The University of California is committed to ensuring educational opportunity for current and future generations of students,” Napolitano said. “That imperative is the driving force behind the proposal to increase access for Californians, to sustain that expanded access and to maintain the excellence of what is commonly considered to be the best research university in the world.”

All nine UC campuses that educate undergraduates will see a rise in enrollment of California residents, an increase made possible by a state budget allocation of $25 million, with an additional $25 million provided by the university, UC regents said. The deal is the result of a political standoff between Napolitano and Gov. Jerry Brown. Napolitano had threatened to raise tuition if the state didn’t increase the UC budget, and Brown had threatened to withhold funding if UC tuitions were raised.

With the new plan in place, the board said it intends to sustain the expanded access in the following two years, enrolling 2,500 additional California resident undergraduates in 2017-2018 and again in 2018-19, for a total increase of 10,000 students.

The university also received $6 million in state funding to enroll 600 more graduate students in 2016-17 and to continue to increase graduate student enrollment at a proportionate rate for the following two years.

--City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report. Photo: Wiki Commons