State Recently Adopted a Nonresident Enrollment Reduction Plan for UC. Recently, the state acted to limit the number of nonresident undergraduates at UC, with the intent to make more slots available for resident undergraduates at high‑demand campuses. Specifically, the 2022‑23 Budget Act directed UC to reduce incoming nonresident undergraduate enrollment at the Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego campuses by a total of 902 FTE students and increase resident undergraduate enrollment by the same amount. The budget act provided UC with $30 million General Fund to backfill for the loss of associated nonresident tuition revenue. If UC does not meet the reduction target, provisional language directs the administration to reduce UC’s appropriation proportional to any shortfall. The 2022‑23 actions were intended to be the first year of a multiyear plan (stretching through 2026‑27) to reduce nonresident undergraduate enrollment at those three campuses down to no more than 18 percent of total undergraduate enrollment. (The 18 percent cap applies to all UC campuses, but only those three campuses currently are notably above the cap.) The planned reductions are spread evenly over each year of the phase‑down period.
The UCs were originally designed to serve the top 12.5% of Californian high schools’ graduating classes. If the population of 18 year olds gets closer to 600k in the next couple years, that means the entire 9-UG campus system will be enrolling at least 75,000 every year (average of 8.3k each).
Not completely sure what numbers they are enrolling now in total, but I recall that Davis hoped to enroll 9400 freshmen this year. However, most other campuses are still in the mid-6000s of entering class. This probably will mean that they are going to have to expand their system in some manner, whether it be more investment into both improving Merced’s infrastructure, quality, and reputation, or building new UCs altogether. Personally, I think that we’ll see schools that are in less crowded areas, like Davis, Merced, Riverside, and Santa Cruz, (coincidentally the lower ranked UCs) will improve, hopefully increasing desirability.
UC Is Likely to Meet 2022‑23 Nonresident Undergraduate Enrollment Target. Compared to the fall 2021 term, nonresident undergraduate headcount in the fall 2022 term declined at the Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego campuses by a total of 992 students. This reduction equates to 913 FTE students, which exceeds the state reduction target of 902 FTE students. Though UC exceeded the overall reduction target for the fall term, one campus reduced nonresident undergraduate enrollment only slightly. Specifically, the smallest decline occurred at the Berkeley campus (88 students), with the Los Angeles campus declining by 406 students and the San Diego campus declining by 498 students. Of the three campuses, Berkeley has the highest percentage of nonresident undergraduate enrollment (23.7 percent of total undergraduate enrollment in fall 2022). Given the Berkeley campus experienced the smallest decline in fall 2022, it will need even greater reductions over the next several years to meet the 18 percent campus cap by 2026‑27. As intended, the three campuses increased their resident undergraduate enrollment in fall 2022—growing by a combined 1,711 students, more than backfilling for the reduction in nonresident undergraduates.
Looking at the thread, one common strand i see is people seem to favor a particular UC over another. For majors like CS, the individual matters more than which UC they attend. All of them have good and bad professors. The core curriculum is the same except for some difference on electives. Networking and finding internship/job is mostly on your own with very few companies attending recruitment fairs.
It does have to account for the fact that not every top 12.5% high school graduate would choose to attend a UC versus something else like attend a CSU, start at a community college, attend a private or out-of-state college, enter military service, or go directly into the civilian workforce.
Allow me to vent about the difficulties employers have when trying to hire students.
Most colleges (big, small, public and private) in California, depend on Handshake for career fairs and job postings. However, very few students look at Handshake. Hmmm, that’s a problem.
Handshake notifies employers when a student looks at their job posting and asks the employer to send a message to the student (which they receive as an email). An employer is allowed to send a small number of messages before being charged to put their job listing in front of more students.
Employers are charged to attend career fairs as well. UCI’s career fair on 4/12/23 is $600. UCLA is $3000/year for two fairs, the privilege to interview on campus and a meeting with UCLA’s DEI representatives.
In December, I posted a job listing on Handshake. I sent it to every UC as well as the local CSUs and private schools. I received no response. Frustrated, I reached out to the clubs on campus and sent them the same job posting that I posted on Handshake. They shared it with their members. Within a week, I had 8 qualified students apply for the job.
My point is, colleges no longer handle recruitment fairs, resume & interview workshops, etc. They contract with a third party to do that. The third party is making money from the schools as well as the employers and is creating a barrier that wasn’t there before.
I read that one of UC’s solutions is to offer more online and remote options. I’m not a fan (my DS3 nearly flunked out of pandemic “remote high school”), but they do offer more flexibility especially for non-traditional UC students and it would be a way to solve the supply-demand problem. However I read recently that UC has decided to NOT offer/allow fully online degrees anymore (apparently students were piecing online classes together somehow and graduating with 100% online classes).
I find it mind boggling when people refer to UC Davis as a ‘lower ranked school’ when they are consistently ranked #1 or #2 in the WORLD for veterinary science.
It really does depend on what you are looking to study. People should look at the individual majors, not the University’s overall ranking.
Agreed. I’m thrilled that my DD was accepted into UC Davis’ Animal Science and Management major. She chose it without even knowing the ranking/prestige of it. She just looked at the majors Davis offers (and the classes needed for each one) and sort of casually decided that that one seemed to be most interesting to her. She doesn’t plan to go on to vet school but WOW. Yes one of the top programs of its kind in the state/nation.
I’ve seen a couple popular graduate programs from the UCs get adopted to be online. UC Berkeley has partially online MPH, Data Science, and Haas MBA degrees for professionals. However, they seem to be mainly revenue sources that ride on the brand to allow professionals to tick any necessary boxes in their careers. I’m sure there are some online undergrad programs too, but I don’t think those will ever make too large a dent.
It’s interesting that you mention Handshake. When my DS3 (now a CS major at Cal State) was touring colleges, one he was interested in was Oregon Institute of Technology (ie Oregon Tech). Like Cal Poly SLO (which also used Handshake), it’s more “hands on” and “learn by doing” and the tour guide spoke of how the school interacts with employers and REQUIRES students to use Handshake. I hadn’t heard of it before. Maybe some schools use/promote Handshake more than others. Maybe UCs deep down just expect/want most students to all stay in research and academia and become professors.
Some schools require it but that doesn’t help either. I think those schools have workshops or a seminar class where students are supposed to research a company and submit an application. In those cases, I receive canned, Chat GPT type applications from students in majors that are nowhere close to what the job involves.
It isn’t just the UCs. In So Cal, USC, LMU, Chapman, Occidental and Pepperdine all use Handshake.
Cal uses handshake too and S22 has so far not responded to a single recruiter message. He keeps saying why bother as a freshman and I keep telling him he needs to build relationships. Absolutely no success so far.
Hmmm, that’s a problem.