I’m curious as to what would happen if the UCs did indeed drastically drop OOS enrollment, perhaps cutting it in half as seems to be the common desire of this forum. Will we see any real change in number of in-state students admitted? Surely there will be 100s more at the most desired UCs and maybe a couple thousand more at the other UC campuses, but this is unlikely to move the needle of the CA public’s perception: UCLA, the most applied to UC campus, admitting several thousand more in-state students will be hardly noticeable given that 100,000 in-state students apply. This is just the nature of a state with almost 40 million people with above average levels of educational attainment.
The three UCs, UCB, UCLA, UCSD were ordered by CA’s state legislature and Governor Newsom to enroll ~ 700 more instate students and reduce nonresidents by the same amount, with this change occurring for the admit classes for 2022. I had a thread in which I showed the applicants/admits/enrolled numbers for 2022 in post #1, then I showed 2021’s numbers in post #3, and the differentials in #6, and it is a bit sloppy because I had trouble with formatting. I provided notes in post #7.
The end result was the following:
| 2022 | 2021 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Campus | Cohort | Non-Res % | Non-Res % |
| UCB | High School | 22.2% | 29.6% |
| Transfers | 16.4% | 16.6% | |
| Combined | 20.5% | 26.0% | |
| 2022 | 2021 | ||
| Campus | Cohort | Non-Res % | Non-Res % |
| UCLA | High School | 22.9% | 31.0% |
| Transfers | 9.0% | 14.3% | |
| Combined | 17.9% | 25.2% | |
| 2022 | 2021 | ||
| Campus | Cohort | Non-Res % | Non-Res % |
| UCSD | High School | 19.3% | 31.1% |
| Transfers | 10.7% | 20.2% | |
| Combined | 16.5% | 27.6% |
(Sorry, I had to interrupt my writing this for a good hour plus to break my fast.) It appears that UCLA was the only one that complied with the order and increased CA students by 806, and reduced non-residents by 717. But in UCB’s and UCSD’s defense, it appears they started to increase CA students in 2021.
There’s a hangup in this in that California is not rolling in a surplus anymore. So will the legislature/governor maintain the increase of funding to the three to continue enrolling more CA students, or will B, LA, and SD have to go back to enrolling more non-residents because a possible reduction of funding to the way it was in 2021 and earlier?
In fact, the governor presented a budget that wanted to cut funding to UCLA by $20m to impose transfer-student guidelines. And I think the state legislature has to let UCLA, UCB, and UCSD do whatever it takes to maintain what each provide all students by admitting the amount of nonresidents needed to keep the costs down in what the state reimburses each of these (and all) campuses. Just about all the UCs are excellent in attracting International students, and if they need to enroll a good percentage of them, then that’ll help the state in its budget.
On the flip side, many OOS students (who do not compete for the same spots as in-state students by and large) are from neighboring states in the Western US. Many of these states have a sliver of CA’s population, and have public university options that will not serve the state’s brightest as well as a UC campus or the University of Washington (another very solid state flagship that takes in many Western students as OOS). Cutting OOS enrollment will have a very noticeable impact for these students.
UCLA is actually the UC that draws in the most OOS students now. The University is popular on the eastcoast, in Texas, and somewhat the south in general, as well as Washington, and the other western states that you mentioned. And as you hinted earlier and I stated also, the increased funding by OOS and International students pays for better services for all students.
These students also bring interesting perspectives and geographical diversity, despite making up less than 20% of the UC student body. I like to think that my classmates, dormmates, and friends from NV, NM, CO, and OR bring some diversity to my school that seems to take almost half of its students from three CA counties.
That’s the chief argument for geographic diversity, and I agree that if you look at the CA students to all the UCs, they are predominantly from The Bay, LA County, and SD county.