The governor’s May budget revision, released Tuesday, remains largely unchanged from the January proposal. Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, said the university did not receive any additional increases in funding in the May revision.

The budget also calls for a four-year tuition freeze for all students except those in professional schools, a restructuring of debt and discontinuation of a proposed unit cap on state-subsidized courses, which could have affected 2,200 UC students in the next school year.

Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Regent Bonnie Reiss raised concerns about rising costs of professional student fees while undergraduate and other program costs have been held constant.

“Because Prop. 30 passed and because of new state revenues, we’ve been able to hold tuition constant,” Stein said. “In reality, we’ve been able to hold undergraduate and Ph.D tuition constant while professional schools continue to rise.”

The regents also discussed restructuring the university’s debt. The state of California currently takes out bonds on behalf of the university, but UC officials say shifting the responsibility of the debt to the UC system would help lower the debt.

“That debt is greater because the state of California’s credit rating is not as good as ours,” said Brooke Converse, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President. “What we’re asking is that the state of California let us take over and restructure that debt, because if we restructure it, we’ll be able to save $80 million a year.”

The university is also working with the governor to expand facilities at UC Merced, said Nathan Brostrom, the university’s executive vice president for business operations.

“The highest priority is a classroom and academic building at UC Merced,” Brostrom said. “They are now close to 6,000 students, and they do not have space for continued growth unless they get more classroom buildings.”

The regents also approved a plan to build a new aquatics center at UC Berkeley on the current site of the Tang Center parking lot.

Protesters from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, a union representing patient-care workers at UC medical centers, also interrupted early in the meeting for about 45 minutes to protest in favor of higher pay and increased staffing.

On Thursday, the regents will meet in closed sessions to discuss collective bargaining matters and lawsuits related to the UC system.

Staff writer Virgie Hoban contributed to this report. 

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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In a study analyzing public universities’ enrollment data, professors Bradley Curs and Ozan Jaquette found that as nonresident student enrollment increased, the number of Pell Grant recipients and underrepresented minority students decreased, particularly at research universities such as UC Berkeley.

“Flagship public universities have been a source of social mobility for low-income and underrepresented minority students who cannot afford out-of-state and private tuition,” the paper reads. “Non-resident enrollment growth — chiefly motivated by revenue concerns — may have the unintended consequence of diminish(ing) socioeconomic and racial diversity.”

The research follows years of debate on the role of nonresident students in the UC system. Nonresident tuition has been increasingly looked to as an alternative source of revenue for the university in light of declining state support. Seeking increased revenue due to budget constraints, UC Berkeley set a goal of increasing nonresident enrollment to 20 percent, which the campus expects to reach next school year.

Nonresident enrollment at UC Berkeley has risen 10 percent since the 2007-08 school year, from 8 percent to 18 percent. UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore said that despite this, the campus has maintained diversity.

“Our data clearly shows that our Pell Grant numbers have remained steady, that our underrepresented minority numbers have been steady and actually increasing,” Gilmore said. “There has always been a commitment to making sure that we were increasing diversity.”

According to the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, Berkeley’s African American population increased from 148 in the 2009-10 school year to 165 this year. The Chicano/Latino population increased from 589 to 612 in the same period.

Currently, out-of-state students in the UC system pay around $23,000 more in tuition fees than in-state students. Curs and Jaquette’s research identified high nonresident fees as a filter that discourages many low-income nonresident students from attending out-of-state schools.

“(Nonresident enrollment) crowds out low-income people more than racial minorities,” Jaquette said. “People are very aware of racial diversity, but class diversity often doesn’t get highlighted as much.”

Still, some students have raised concerns about the relatively static underrepresented minority numbers on the UC Berkeley campus. Kirk Coleman, executive director of the UC Berkeley bridges Multicultural Resource Center and a campus senior, said increased nonresident enrollment would inevitably exclude underrepresented minority students.

“It’s problematic that (the campus) thinks where the numbers are now are OK,” Coleman said. “If you look at (underrepresented minority) populations based on state demographics, they are significantly higher than how they are represented on campus. I think that shows where the university is going — not towards more diversity but towards making more money.”

Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri said the campus considered a potential decrease in diversity when it established the 20 percent nonresident enrollment goal but that diversity has remained steady despite substantial growth in nonresident enrollment.

“The socioeconomic piece is pretty obvious because it’s a lot more expensive to come as an out-of-state student, and the financial aid is much lower,” Basri said. “It hasn’t really had an impact on diversity so far. I’m a little surprised by that, but since people were aware of that issue, there was an extra effort made (to improve diversity).”

UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein has spoken out against increasing nonresident enrollment in the past, pointing to the possibility of nonresident “clustering,” a phenomenon in which out-of-state students flock to top-ranking schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley more than to other UC campuses. Student Regent-designate Cinthia Flores echoed this sentiment, pointing to the university’s public mission of access and inclusion.

“The primary purpose of the UC is it is supposed to be a system that provides Californians with an affordable education, and a big part of owning up to that commitment is making sure the diversity of California is shown in the UC system,” Flores said. “When you have such an out-of-state-student-focus strategy, the demand for out-of-state students does not translate throughout the system … Then that creates a shortage in the system.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The campus accepted 9,219 in-state freshman applicants for fall 2013, a decrease of 1.4 percent from 2012 numbers. The drop in in-state admissions follows a year of continued debate about the role of nonresident students within the UC system. Despite a drop in nonresident admissions last year, UC Berkeley saw a 26 percent jump this year in out-of-state student admissions and a 46.4 percent increase in international student admissions.

This increase is intentional, according to Amy Jarich, assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions, who said the campus has been working toward a goal of 20 percent nonresident undergraduate enrollment, a target she said the campus could meet by the 2014-15 school year.

“(Rising admission for nonresidents) is something that we’re doing just to be able to bring the numbers in line with the available state funding from California,” Jarich said. “The increase definitely is a reflection of the campus’s ongoing effort to build the overall percentage of undergraduate nonresident students.”

The university saw a similar decrease of 2.2 percent in admission for in-state students systemwide. The university admitted 14.3 percent more out-of-state students and 28.5 percent more international students, as compared to last year.

According to a statement from the UC Office of the President, “The slight decline in the number and proportion of admitted students who are Californians reflects the fallout from years of severe budget cuts to UC, which has enrolled thousands of California students for whom it received no state funding.”

Michael Trevino, UC director of undergraduate admissions, echoed this sentiment in a press conference Thursday, noting that nonresident students pay around $23,000 more than resident students annually.

The university has looked to nonresident tuition as a source of potential revenue in the past. The UC Board of Regents considered adopting a formal policy to increase out-of-state enrollment at its November meeting, but UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein and others have voiced concern about further opening the university to out-of-state students.

“There are consequences to dramatically increasing our out-of-state student body,” Stein said at the November meeting. “There’s far less racial diversity, and because the tuition for out-of-state students is higher, there is a corresponding lack of socioeconomic diversity.”

According to UC Berkeley admissions data, 3.6 percent of newly admitted students from California are African American, 0.7 percent are American Indian and 17.7 percent are Hispanic/Latino. Jarich said the campus is looking to increase these rates — which have remained relatively stable over recent years — in part by continuing to work with campus groups such as bridges, the UC Berkeley multicultural center.

The data also report that UCLA had the lowest admission rate across the system, accepting 20.1 percent from an applicant pool of more than 80,000. UC Berkeley accepted 20.8 percent of its applicants.

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The new program, called the “Promise Platform,” will turn students and young alumni into fundraisers by asking them to use social media to solicit donations from friends and family in exchange for promising to complete a given task. These promises could range from a student not drinking coffee for a week to — as chair Sherry Lansing jokingly suggested — UC President Mark Yudof and Gov. Jerry Brown singing a duet.

The initiative, which relies on the strength of participants’ social networks, follows years of efforts at developing methods of creative fundraising, according to UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein. But the underlying incentives for students and alumni to participate remain uncertain.

“This just sort of points to problems with the university if we have to resort to bartering in this way,” said UC Berkeley junior Mariana Sosa.

The program, set to launch in October, falls under Project You Can, a systemwide initiative launched in 2009 that aims to raise $1 billion for student scholarships by 2014, said Daniel Dooley, UC senior vice president for external relations, at the UC Regents meeting Wednesday.

“A student could promise to dye their hair purple if their network would help to raise $1,000 for student scholarships,” he said. “You create a buzz on social media networks (through) these promises.”

The UC system partnered with the Entertainment Industry Foundation for this effort. Lansing, who also serves as chair of the EIF board, said EIF will help recruit celebrities to encourage the general public to get involved.

“The importance of the Entertainment Industry Foundation is that they will give us a handful of celebrities so we can cut through the clutter and get attention to this,” Lansing said at the meeting.

The EIF will be offering its services pro bono, according to UC spokesperson Dianne Klein. She said the program intends to target donors of all levels within the university as well as interested individuals outside the system.

“It’s a chance for all of us to give a dollar, to give a million dollars,” Lansing said.

In developing the program, the university worked with Stein and representatives from the UC Student Association. The UCSA will encourage students to fundraise once the project launches next fall, according to ASUC External Affairs Vice President Shahryar Abbasi.

“Hopefully, (the university) starts to do these projects more,” Abbasi said. “This is a public institution, and it’s only going to survive if the public helps out.”

The regents will discuss the project again in September to offer a final update before the project is launched.

“I think it’s a very good idea,” said UC Berkeley junior Nelson Rozo. “If there’s a collective enough effort, it could be cool.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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Members of the committee spoke privately — in person and over the phone — to discuss how to best organize the search. Representatives from Isaacson, Miller — an executive search firm hired to aid in the search — were also at the meeting.

According to the Los Angeles Times, members of the special search committee will include regents Richard Blum, Russell Gould, George Kieffer, Bonnie Reiss, Frederick Ruiz, Bruce Vaner, Alumni Regent Ron Rubenstein, Student Regent Jonathan Stein and chair Sherry Lansing.

Yudof announced his resignation in January after holding the president position for five years, citing taxing health issues and a desire to change his professional lifestyle. He plans to step down in August to become a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Since Yudof’s tenure began, students have seen tuition nearly double, from $6,636 in 2008 to a current level of $12,192.

After narrowing down the pool of candidates with the advisory panels, the special committee will recommend a candidate to the regents at large for a final vote of approval to hire a new UC president. Yudof will not have a vote.

According to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel, the regents will lay out a rough timeline for the selection process and naming members to various faculty, staff, student and alumni advisory panels that will set goals for the selection. The panels will also play a role in narrowing down the candidate pool.

Stein declined to comment on the record for this story. Stein, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, will vote with the other regents on Yudof’s successor.

Contact Jacob Brown and Jeremy Gordon at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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SB 240, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, aims to increase levels of voting among college students by addressing the geographic concerns regarding polling sites. According to the bill’s provisions, county officials would have to locate a polling site within campus boundaries for every election.

The bill, however, does not require community colleges to have polling sites — only that county officials consider placing sites on community college campuses. According to Adam Keigwin, a spokesperson for Yee’s office, the rationale for this is that many community college students live at home and can easily vote at their neighborhood polling site.

“The goal of this bill is to get young people involved in democracy,” Keigwin said. “Anytime you make polling easier for students or young people, they show up.”

County governments are responsible for determining polling locations, which can change depending on the size of the election in question. For smaller elections, counties typically consolidate polling posts, potentially removing sites on university campuses.

Tim Dupuis, interim registrar of voters for Alameda County, said the bill would not decrease poll access for Alameda County voters despite the set number of polling sites per precinct.

UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein expressed enthusiasm for the bill, saying that it would improve student-voter turnout on campuses.

The passage of SB 240 would have little effect on UC Berkeley, as polling sites are nearly always set up on campus. During the 2012 presidential election, polling sites at UC Berkeley were located at campus residences Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, Clark Kerr and the Oscar Wilde House.

Even with an abundance of polling sites on campus, peripheral location of sites can make it difficult for some students to cast their votes. For freshman Dustin Marshall, the two-hour wait he experienced during the presidential election was not too much of an issue, but for others, the wait can be a deterrent to casting their votes.

“It was my first time voting, so I was excited,” Marshall said. “I can see how someone might be upset if it wasn’t their first time voting.”

Yee’s office remains optimistic about the bill’s bipartisan support during the legislative process. Sen. Joel Anderson, R-San Diego, an early supporter of the bill, agreed to be named co-author in March if the bill’s provisions continue to apply to all elections, presidential or otherwise.

The bill will have to go through the elections committee in March and, if received favorably, will go to the Senate floor for debate in June.

Contact Christine Tyler and Matt Trejo at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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At the meeting, Brown, an ex-officio regent, suggested further fiscal discipline to make up for shortfalls in state funding. His proposals included reducing students average graduation time, lowering administrators’ compensation and decreasing faculty benefits.

Brown assumed an unusually active role in the financial committee’s discussion, at one point quoting Cicero’s “On the Republic” to describe the university’s current fiscal situation as part of a larger class conflict between the “elites and the plebeians.”

In response to the governor’s request for further fiscal discipline, Regent Richard Blum pointed out that UC faculty and executives continue to have significantly lower salaries than their counterparts at private universities — a trend that Blum said will “only result in the UC becoming a junior college.”

“You have to ask yourself, do you want the UC’s campuses to be as good as they have always been?” Blum said.

California Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, warned the regents that Brown’s budget proposal is unlikely to pass if Sacramento’s demand for stable tuition levels is not met.

“If the discussion with the members of Legislature has the same tones as present here, I do not think you will be successful with the outcomes you want” Perez said. “Over the last several years there have been 900 million in cuts. Fee increases have been 1.4 billion. The fee increases are disproportionate to the disinvestment of the state.

According to Regent Sherry Lansing, current chair of the board, increasing tuition for certain graduate programs remained a possibility for dealing with fiscal difficulties — a statement that drew sharp criticism from  Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Perez. Still, she said, undergraduate tuition increases in the 2013-14 school year are highly unlikely.

Lansing praised the president and speaker for facilitating “healthy discourse,” which she said is productive in helping find alternative sources of revenue to state appropriations.

Contact Alex Berryhill and Shirin Ghaffary at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Currently, nonresident enrollment stands at 8.8 percent systemwide, and recently conversations at an administrative level have begun about increasing the nonbinding 10 percent cap on systemwide nonresident enrollment to 15 or 20 percent.

Still, some remain wary about whether the university can increase the number of out-of-state students while maintaining a diverse student body.

“I don’t mean to demonize out-of-state students, but there are consequences to dramatically increasing our out-of-state student body,” said Student Regent Jonathan Stein. “There’s far less racial diversity, and because the tuition for out-of-state students is higher, there is a corresponding lack of socioeconomic diversity.”

Only 10.9 percent of domestic nonresident admitted students were underrepresented minorities, as opposed to 30.6 percent of California residents, according to a UC report on newly admitted students for fall 2011.

Though non-resident students on the whole tend to be less racially diverse, non-residents bring cultural diversity to the university, said UC spokesperson Dianne Klein.

“Someone who grew up in, say, Plano, Texas, comes from a different cultural background than somebody who grew up in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood,” she said. “These students are not displacing Californians — they are helping to pay for their education.”

Debate around the issue has also come up in the state Legislature following the introduction of SCA 22 on May 15. The amendment, introduced by state Senator Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, aimed to establish a formal 10 percent cap on out-of-state enrollment, including international students, at each campus beginning in the 2013-14 academic year. The university formally opposed the bill.

“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,” said Rubio in a statement.

Compared to other public universities across the country, the UC system has been relatively conservative in admitting out-of-state students.

In its fall 2011 incoming classes, 42.9 percent of students at the University of Iowa and 39.7 percent of students at the University of Michigan were nonresidents, according to a UC report on nonresident value.

Ted Spencer, executive director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Michigan, said the school does not have admissions policies that address the ratio between nonresidents and in-state students.

Going forward, the university remains open to moving in that direction and enrolling more nonresidents, Klein said.

“In this new reality of dramatically reduced state support, UC must remain nimble and creative in order to preserve the guiding principles of our university system: access, affordability and academic excellence,” Klein said.

Jamie Applegate covers higher education. Contact her at japplegate@dailycal.org.

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The legislation, proposed by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), would allow local property taxes to pass with a 55 percent voter majority in communities instead of supermajority as currently required.

The proposal comes in the wake of Proposition 30’s passage and newly elected democratic supermajorities in both legislative houses. If approved, the legislation may open the door to even greater changes to Proposition 13 — a landmark piece of legislation that limits property taxes and requires a two-thirds majority to pass local measures in communities and taxes through the legislature.

“I think given the context of everything happening with Prop. 30… changing the way taxes are passed in California through structural changes of Prop 13 is important,” said ASUC External Affairs Vice President Shahryar Abbasi.

According to Abbasi, Prop. 13 has been the primary reason for a lack of consistent revenue in the state of California and this has directly affected UC funding.

“Education funding across California has been decimated in recent years, with severe consequences for students and our local schools,” Leno said in a statement. “This change in law would give voters the power to make decisions about public education at the local level.”

Leno’s bill will first be formally discussed in the new year, according to his press secretary Ali Bay.

Implemented in 1978, Prop. 13 has long been a point of contention among Californians for its strict anti-tax constraints. Despite cries for reform, former Berkeley College Republicans President Shawn Lewis said the measure keeps many people in their houses, and most Californians still support the measure.

“Passing Prop. 30 sent a signal that (the legislature) can use students as a bargaining chip,” Lewis said. “That’s kind of what I see happening again.”

As part of their budget campaign, the University of California Student Association took up reforming Prop. 13 due to its effects on public education. But it remains to be seen if Californians are interested in revising the law.

“It feels like we’re not clear right now if the passage of Prop. 30 means that we are in a new era in California in terms of taxes,” said UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein. “Maybe it means that (the state is) open to revising Prop. 13, but maybe it doesn’t.”

Contact Libby Rainey at lrainey@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Senator Mark Leno’s proposed legislation would place a proposition on the ballot to amend Proposition 13. In fact, the legislation itself would amend Proposition 13.

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At the presentation, Jonathan Stein, the student regent, and Cinthia Flores, the student regent-designate, emphasized the importance of students voting in the upcoming election to prevent $250 million in midyear budget cuts to the UC.

“The next five days are our opportunity to change the future of the university of California,” Stein said. “No pressure, but literally that’s what’s at stake.”

If passed, Prop. 30 would temporarily increase the state sales tax by a quarter percentage point and the incomes tax on Californians earning more than $250,000 annually. The measure would prevent close to $6 billion in cuts to the state’s public education institutions and safety services, $375 million of which would otherwise be cut from the UC over the next two fiscal years.

To make up for lost funding if the measure fails, the UC Board of Regents will likely vote to raise tuition by up to 20.3 percent, or about $2,400, beginning in January. Additionally, student tuition could be close to $24,000  by the 2015-2016 academic year, according to the presentation.

“That doesn’t just blow the roof off of public school tuition in California. That blows the roof off of public school tuition in the United States,” Stein said. “We would be traumatically altering the landscape of public higher education in this country.”

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California indicates that 70 percent of voters between ages 18 and 34 support Prop. 30, but make up only 18 percent of the state’s likely voters. Because of historically low student voter turnout during elections, Stein and Flores said the measure could pass if students vote at the Nov. 6 election.

However, some UC students still remain unaware of the proposition. A poll by the Daily Bruin and UCLA Department of Statistics showed that about 58 percent of UCLA students surveyed were not familiar with the proposition.

“I don’t think many people know about it,” said Jessica Yu, a UC Berkeley junior. “If it’s not about the presidency, it (seems) less important.”

Still, Flores and Stein emphasized that the ballot measure is a chance for students to be proactive in affecting the UC’s financial state, rather than react to proposed tuition increases with demonstrations and protests. UC student tuition has more-than tripled since 2000 due to decreased state funding, which made up about 11 percent of the UC’s operating budget in last fiscal year. In the 2011-2012 academic year, student fees brought in more revenue for the system than state funding for the first time in the system’s history.

Flores and Stein said that efforts to support the proposition, recent tuition increases and  future measures taken by the UC to combat the decreased state funding are still only temporary fixes to a larger problem.

“All of the budget options are band-aids on a much, much larger wound,” Stein said. “None of them will stop the bleeding like real meaningful investment in public higher education which we stopped doing a couple years back and we need to begin doing again.”

Contact Gladys Rosario at grosario@dailycal.org

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