A new piece of California legislation that would limit out-of-state enrollment at each UC campus will likely face opposition from the university.
Senate Constitutional Amendment 22, introduced Tuesday by state Senator Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, would establish a 10 percent cap on out-of-state enrollment in any incoming class — which includes international student enrollment — at each of the 10 UC campuses starting with in 2013-14.
“SCA 22 ensures that California students get a fair shot at attending our University of California system — and not be turned away simply because a wealthy student from the East Coast or abroad shows up with a checkbook in hand,” Rubio said in a press release.
Currently, the university has a policy to limit out-of-state enrollment to 10 percent systemwide and was at a total of about 8.4 percent as of fall 2011. However, at individual campuses like UC Berkeley and UCLA, the proportion exceeds 10 percent.
In fall 2011, out-of-state and international students represented 18 percent of undergraduate student enrollment at UC Berkeley and 14 percent at UCLA.
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said at a press conference in August that the campus’s long-term goal for out-of-state enrollment was 20 percent, justifying this goal by saying that Californian enrollment has not suffered as a result of increased out-of-state enrollment.
“As long as we’re meeting our obligations to Californians, I think it enriches the education environment for everyone to have a reasonable number of out-of-state and international students,” Birgeneau said at the conference.
At a press conference outside the UC Board of Regents meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger said the union supports Rubio’s amendment.
“This would mean my kids stand a chance at a UC education,” Lybarger said.
AFSCME Local 3299 represents more than 17,000 employees throughout the UC system.
Although UC analysts have not yet completed their examination of the legislation, UC spokesperson Dianne Klein said the university plans to oppose the amendment.
“We will likely oppose the bill because setting admissions criteria is within the purview of the university — its faculty and administration — not the Legislature,” Klein said. “This has worked well for UC, and the state of California, for nearly 150 years and has helped to make the University of California the best public university system in the world.”
The amendment can be acted on by the state Senate as early as June 15 and will require a two-thirds majority vote to pass.
Christopher Yee is an assistant news editor.
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What a joke: perhaps the California legislature should criticize the ways that UC tries to generate revenue when it actually starts funding it.
Rubio shakes the hands of Californians while stabbing them in the back. It is a nice gesture to tell Californians that you want their children to have the best chance possible to go to Cal, but it doesn’t do them any good, when Rubio cuts funding and says your Californian child will have to pay private school level tuition and won’t graduate in four years because the university can’t afford to to provide all the classes needed for graduation. We need an amendment to this bill that will cap out of state students only if the legislature fully funds Cal.
Sure the president of the union can send her kid to Cal, because she has a nice large income made off of the sweat of union workers, but the union workers she represents won’t have enough money to send their children to Cal.
Geh I don’t know how I feel about this. I acutally agree with the intent, as a California tax payer I would hope other California residents always get priority at the UC’s before non California residents or US citizens do. But I can see this amendment as being used as an excuse to force the CA state legislature to increase taxes and forget once again about cutting spending. I’m torn
As a taxpayer, you don’t support UC much at all, and to survive in the face of citizenry rejection, to protect the State’s renown asset, UC is enrolling more students who are willing to pay for the enormous benefit they receive. Kinda ironic, even moreso that out-of-staters get it and CA citizens don’t/can’t.
This is an absurd proposal. We should try and find the best students possible for Cal, not to artificially lower standards by limiting the access pool.
Yes, but constantly raising the number of out-of-state and international students in order to raise more money merely displaces similarly qualified students from within California (because given the choice between two academically identical students, one in-state and one out-of-state, the UC would much prefer to take the one which will end up paying 2x more). This cap keeps UC admissions from admitting on the basis of wealth rather than achievement. As the guy says, “SCA 22 ensures that California students get a fair shot at attending
our University of California system—and not be turned away simply
because a wealthy student from the East Coast or abroad shows up with a
checkbook in hand”.
That presupposes there are a limited pool of academically qualified students for Berkeley. International and out-of-state students are, in general, far more competitive than the average in-state student (this is coming from an in-state student), since its so much tougher for them to get into Berkeley.
It might be true that these out-of-state and international students are displacing Californians, but they are not displacing ones of the same academic caliber.
Out of state students don’t get the benefit of automatic acceptance based on class ranking (9%) that in-state students have. However, most non-minority Cal applicants are way above this low standard and competition among top students is fierce. Based on anecdotal evidence, many in-state students with nearly perfect SAT and SAT II scores, extracurricular awards, and astronomical GPAs still fail to get into Cal or UCLA, while out of state students with high achievements (but nothing unusually awesome) still manage to get in. That is why many Californian voters suspect that out-of-state students who pay 4X the tuition are displacing Californians of the same academic caliber.
100% not true. The UC admits as many CA residents as they can based on state funding. CA resident tuition does not cover the debt they incurr on the UC. That’s where state funding comes in. It covers the rest. What that means is that even if the UC stopped admitting non-resident students all together they would not admit a single extra CA resident because they don’t want to incurr any more debt. The UC is admitting more non-residents in an effort to survive the MASSIVE budget cuts they’ve received. If Rubio really wants to help California students get into a UC then he should work on getting more funding to the UC. ONLY that will allow them to admit more CA students. Trust me, Rubio isn’t doing this for us; he’s only doing this for himself to make himself look good by capitalizing on a hot-topic. Typical politician. And in the end his self-serving agenda will only make things worse because the UC will have to cut more and more services, classes, programs, etc. He isn’t helping CA students; he’s hurting them by gutting the UC. Wake up Californians!!! You can’t keep cutting education and expect things to be business as usual. If you want your kids to get a good education and go to a good college/university then you need to make funding education a TOP priority. This means supporting all levels of public education K-12, the community colleges, CSU’s and UC’s. Because if you don’t it is our children, and our children’s children who will suffer the most.
That is true only if Cal were a private school. Why should California parents pay taxes to create top universities for the benefit of out of state students? After those students graduate, they’re less likely to stay in California if they have strong family ties outside of California so they won’t pay income taxes to California.
Impose another constraint, the Lib author of this legislation , Rubio, D-Shafter, knows what’s best for UC. Thanks for the held moron.
The proposal to cap out of state enrollment is but a well-intentioned band-aid.
The bigger problem is the UC administration.
This type of legislation would not be needed if the administration understood or appreciated the UC’s mission and obligation as a public institution in the state of CA.
da fuq?
feigned misunderstanding? delightful stuff that.
educate yourself:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/05/moving-toward-michigan.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/07/opinion/la-ed-uc-20110707
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/17/MN291O4J7L.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/30/MNCN1K4RTP.DTL
http://www.dailycal.org/2011/06/30/admissions-data-shows-increase-in-out-of-state-students-on-campus/