Cash-shy UC jacks up nonresident admissions

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Posted April 18th, 2011 by Charlotte Draper No Comments »

Faced with ongoing state funding cuts, the University of California has significantly increased the number of out-of-state students being offered admission into the freshman class of the state’s premier university system.

Nonresident students pay almost $23,000 a year more in fees than students from California. And UC officials openly acknowledged Monday that raising their numbers for the 2011-12 school year will help sustain campus programs, even as the university absorbs a state funding cut of at least $500 million.

The nine campuses that accepted undergraduates received a record number of freshmen applicants 106,186 for the coming school year. They offered admission to 72,432 students, 4,100 more than last year; all but 500 of those additional spots went to students from outside the state.

The extra revenue that out-of-state students generate will help support academic offerings and services for all students, said Lora Jo Bossio, associate vice chancellor at UC Davis.

Systemwide, 18 percent of those being offered spots at a UC campus this fall are from another country or state, up from 6 percent last year. Some campuses saw more dramatic increases: Out-of-state residents make up about a third of those who got acceptance letters from UC Berkeley, up from 17 percent last year. They make up 30 percent of those accepted into UCLA, compared with 12 percent last year.

UC Davis is offering nearly 14 percent of its spots to nonresidents, up from 7 percent last year.

Of course, not all students who received acceptance letters will end up enrolling at a UC. But UC officials said, based on the number of acceptances, they expect to enroll more freshmen overall and a higher percentage of students from out of state.

Last December, the UC Board of Regents made a concerted decision to increase the number of students who come from other states and nations. A commission report provided to the regents cited finances as a primary reason to increase the numbers. The report said that a 1 percent increase in the number of out-of-state students would generate almost $1 million.

Pamela Burnett, interim director of UC admissions, said UC President Mark Yudof gave campuses more flexibility this year in determining the size of the freshman class because of the “dire financial condition that the campuses are in.”

Systemwide, UC campuses put about 16,500 students on waiting lists. Another 12,733 UC-eligible students who were not offered admission into the specific campuses they applied to will be invited to attend UC Merced, one of two UC campuses without a waiting list, Burnett said.

Despite ongoing funding cuts, UC Davis accepted more freshmen overall for the 2011-12 academic year than it did this school year. The campus issued acceptance letters to 21,074 of the 45,825 would-be freshmen who applied.

Bossio, the associate vice chancellor, said it was too soon to assess how the expected enrollment increase might impact class sizes and student housing.

“Housing has been alerted we will have more students, and we hope we have more nonresidents,” Bossio said.

Given the surge in applications, the incoming class at UC Davis is expected to be one of its highest achieving. In recent years the grade-point average of incoming freshmen has been about 4.0, Bossio said.

“We’re expecting a well-qualified and robust student body,” she said.

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