The University of California will see a record number of international and out-of-state students enter their halls this fall, reports an LA Times article last week. The increase, from 6% nonresident students to 8% is a result of “a controversial effort by the revenue-hungry university to garner the much higher tuition that nonresident students must pay.”
This nonresident increase will be seen most at UCLA and UC Berkeley branches of the UC system. Berkeley is expecting its non-Californian proportions to double this year compared to last; 22.6% of Berkeley’s incoming freshmen for the 2010-2011 academic year will be out-of-state or international students. 900 fewer in-state freshmen were accepted due to these changes. UCLA’s freshman out-of-state proportion is expected to go up 11.4% from last year.
Many Californian families are concerned that by enrolling more out-of-state students, UC schools will begin to push out their own in-state applicants to other schools due to lack of room taken up by nonresidents. After all, why wouldn’t UC adcoms choose a student who will pay an extra $22,000 over a student who only pays minimal in-state costs?
While other prestigious state schools around the country (like in Virginia, Michigan, and Colorado, for example) accept more than 30% of their freshmen classes from an out-of-state pool, there are those who believe that if the UC schools continue moving towards those proportions, they’ll be “hurt politically and economically.”
In-state students may get the short end of the stick during the system-wide quest for higher paying students, especially those in-state students who come from economically and racially diverse backgrounds. As more out-of-state students are accepted to the UC schools, diversity rates are expected to drop.
Berkeley argues that “it has long shouldered more than its fair share on the economic diversity front,” reports a Chronicle article. The Berkeley administration uses this as part of its defense for accepting more out-of-state students, a move which will essentially decrease the school’s otherwise high diversity proportions. In fact, Berkeley’s incoming freshman class will already see a result of the admissions changes with a 12% drop in its Latino population.
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Source: UC freshmen to include record number of out-of-state and international students (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/education/la-me-uc-enroll-20100715,0,3848246.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Feducation+%28L.A.+Times+-+Education%29)
Source: U.C. Berkeley and the Access Mission of Public Universities (http://chronicle.com/blogPost/UC-Berkeleythe-Access/25571/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en)
Source: Berkeley Sees Admission of Latino Students Drop and Nonresidents Jump (http://chronicle.com/article/Berkeley-Sees-Admission-of/66287/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en)
Read the full article: UC International Admissions News Update
