A recent report finds that Californian college enrollment in the UC and CSU systems has declined by about one-fifth over the past five years, due to declining funding for higher education.
Released by the Public Policy Institute of California on Wednesday, the report entitled “Defunding Higher Education: What Are the Effects on College Enrollment?” explores the relationship between budget cuts and the percentage of Californians that choose to enroll in college, concluding that California is moving in the wrong direction in terms of funding for education and undermining its economic future.
“California’s financial commitment to higher education has been compromised by fiscal crises and competing state priorities,” states the report, authored by Bren Policy Fellow Hans Johnson.
The report states that as a result of decreased funding, high school graduates in California are increasingly less likely to attend a four-year college. Among the category of best-prepared students — high school graduates who have completed the necessary courses for admission to the UC and CSU systems — this rate has declined from about 67 percent to 55 percent in the past five years, according to the report.
Some of these students now opt to attend California Community Colleges, which have seen their enrollment rates increase by 1 percent. However, the report states that this does not make up for the overall decline in enrollment.
“If current enrollment trends persist, California faces an alarming loss of college graduates — at a time when the state needs to be developing a more highly skilled workforce to ensure its future prosperity,” Johnson writes in the report.
The institute projects that the state will fall one million college graduates short of economic demand by 2025 unless current trends are reversed.
UC Berkeley’s 2012-2013 freshman admissions data seem to tell a different story. Although the demand for admission increased from about 53,000 applications last year to about 62,000 applying for the 2012-2013 freshmen class, the number of students admitted has remained relatively consistent at around 13,000. Of admitted applicants, 4,250 are expected to attend UC Berkeley, consistent with last year’s data. Underrepresented minority admission also increased by 2 percent, according to UC Berkeley admissions data.
“Enrollment rates have remained relatively flat over the past five years,” said UC spokesperson Brooke Converse, in an email. “Applications to UC campuses are at an all-time high, but budget constraints have prevented UC from increasing enrollment targets for California students. Campuses are being forced to turn away qualified students.”
The institute’s report suggests several policy alternatives, including a plan by which students postpone payment of tuition until after graduation and then pay a percent of their future earnings to the UC.
The report stresses the importance of funding California community colleges and judging schools based on student outcomes in terms of graduation rates and degree completion. Finally, the report indicates the need to bolster the Cal Grant program, which offers about $1 billion dollars in grants to low-income students.
However, according to a report by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax initiative for the November ballot includes a 61.7 percent cut to the California Student Aid Commission. This measure would affect about 26,600 students, making college enrollment decisions increasingly difficult.
The report also states California could be on a path towards meeting the state’s demand for college educated individuals and solving the its long term difficulties, but instead the state’s education crisis “looms as large as ever.”
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The sad thing is that Brown has steepened the problems, not helped them. There was once a time when Jerry knew better, when he was a younger man. Now? The old dude is no better than the Republicans who got us into this mess nor, most likely, the fool he defeated to get this job.
The “Fool” who “got us into this mess” was the recalled Democrat, Governor Gray Davis, who escalated state worker salaries during the dot com bubble by projecting alternative minimum tax revenue due to stock options, that was clearly transitory, into the distant future and more importantly by failing to pursue Prop 187 (also known as SOS, Save our State) to the US Supreme Court, where it would have been upheld and in fact would have overturned Plyler v Doe, which would have indeed saved our state by getting the illegals out of the k-12 schools and emergency rooms and denying them other government services, thereby causing an exodus from the state. California’s budget woes are primarily due to the massive costs associated with its illegal population.
“California’s budget woes are primarily due to the massive costs associated with its illegal population.”
O rly??? Is this truthfulness or just truthiness? You’ll have to find some citations for that bro.
Cali Prop 13 has cost the government about $528 billion since its passage in ’78. That’s 2640 times the proposed UC budget cut this year. “Illegals” costing California?? Get out, they use some of our social services…but they also grow our food.
http://www.hjta.org/about-hjta/history-hjta
Prop 13 has kept people from being unfairly taxed and forced out of their homes. It isn’t fair to increase taxes on home owners, when they have not recognized the income their new tax is based on. You would steal property ownership from people, and force them to rent, since they couldn’t pay the high taxes of ownership.
Illegals and Anchors in k-12 cost the taxpayers anywhere from 10-20 billion per year, depending on whose estimates of the illegal and anchor k-12 population are utilized, and that is just a fraction of the cost associated with the illegal population. 1 million illegals and Anchors = 10 Billion per year. 2 million illegals and Anchors in k-12 = 20 billion per year.
As for the $528 billion “cost,” that is obviously not offset against the higher sales tax and other revenues due to a lower property tax rate, nor does it account for the higher price of real estate due to the limit on property tax rates. Within a year of Prop 13 passing, home prices in most of California at least doubled. If the property assessments had simply doubled without Prop 13 between 1978 and 1979, the tax rate would have been lowered so that amount of revenue from property tax would have never been collected. The impetus for passing Prop 13 was Serrano v Priest which essentially changed financing for public schools in California and did not allow the tax revenue to stay in the schools that served the communities taxed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest
I am not going to lay all the blame on Davis. The democrat controlled legislature was with him every step of the way. Plus, the legislature hates education. We once were one of the top states in education, but with the democrat controlled legislature taking all that revenue over the last several decades and putting it to other projects, our education system has plummeted to one of the lowest in the country. I guess I should also add that the democrat led school system has also done a bang up job of making a mess of our public education.
I can’t stand how students will delude themselves just to stick with the democratic party. This mess is not from the republicans. For decades, the democrats have controlled the legislature, and it is the legislature that makes the budget. It isn’t republicans who are cutting UC allocations and forcing tuition increases, because they don’t have the votes. It has always been the democratic legislature in control as California has gone from one of the top education states to one of the bottom education states, and all the while becoming one of the highest taxed states. Stop telling yourself lies. Honesty is the only way you will ever actually change this state.