Why is state legislature involved in reducing non-res enrollment at UCB, LA, & SD?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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There’s an article in one of the publications – I believe it’s the LA Times, that stated that 50% of California high-school grads now qualify for both CSU and UC. Obviously, that % would apply to CSU, and those who qualify for UC has ascended to what I estimated as being ~ 20% or maybe a bit higher.

So somehow they switched from going with a set percentage that was closer to 10% as a minimum qualification before, to now going by some hard gpa threshold or so it seemed. It’s not the shear number of students which have increased – in actuality, the article said that there’s now a decline of high-school grads in CA that has made its way from the eastcoast to the west, but for some reason the powers that be lowered the bar for entry, which I feel is too low. And I don’t know if the UC has to make room for anyone over that 3.1 marker. Would a 3.1 be at the level of the 80th percentile? At some schools it probably would be, and it would probably be an unweighted gpa, because this student wouldn’t have much if any APs.

And I can’t tell you what the uwgpa stats are for all nine UC campuses other than UCLA, UCB, and UCSC, because on the Common Data Sets, the other six just list a weighted mean gpa of their incoming freshmen or they ignore the C11 and C12 data completely. UCM reports a 3.51 mean, but they report 12% who have a perfect 4.0 gpa, whereas UCSC reports a 3.63 mean, but reports only 6% with a perfect 4.0. So it appears that UCSC is reporting unweighted gpa and UCM is reporting weighted – and there are two weighted gpas for UC, UC and fully weighted gpa. UCD reported a 4.0 for the C12 data, and 64.7% who had straight-A averages, which is ridiculous.

Are you referring to all the other UCs but not UCB, UCLA, and UCSD? All UCs make exceptions for those who come from lower socioeconomic background – those who attend poorly funded high schools. So when the prior governor signed into law the fact that non-resident students must have higher qualifications than in-state students – I’m presuming on an average – then that wasn’t really a hard marker to which to attain.

I believe that there has to be some sort of segregation of applicants into the three residential cohorts, and admissions is well aware of these groupings. Before UC dropped the SAT/ACT in 2020, the 25th percentile for UCLA enrollees from CA was ~ 1,250, but for OOS students it was ~ 1,390 and for Internationals it was ~ 1,450, and for the 75th it was 1,500, 1,520 and 1,530, respectively. The OOS students had higher weighted grades than CA students at both the 25th and 75th, and the Internationals had higher unweighted grades as they don’t have AP in foreign or International schools to pump up grades. So at least for UCLA it was pretty easy.

Undoubtedly, there will be high-grade students who are shut out from UCLA, UCB, and UCSD, the three who were singled out by the legislators. There was one assembly or senate person who said that he/she wanted the three to take more California students because these three have greater opportunities professionally. That’s not true; if UCM gets a 4.00/4.60 gpa student who scored 1,560 on the SAT, that student will have just as great an opportunity as someone who graduated from MIT, with his/her major being, say, Computer Science, Physics or Chemistry.

There are kids who are leaving the state for U-Dub, Oregon, even some of the public SEC conference schools. I’m guessing that these kids couldn’t get into B, LA, and/or SD, and they just didn’t want to attend D, I, M, R, or (UC)SC – I wouldn’t put SB in that group. Oregon has something like an 85% acceptance rate, and U-Dub has a 40% rate. But they’re taking a lot of Californians but besides being an easier admit, they’re looking for those who pay full tuition, just as the UC schools are doing. So every public college is looking for ways to fund its teaching and student services with non-residents.

As far as the CC route, I believe we should be happy that we have the excellent three-tier system of higher education in CA. There’s nowhere else that has this. But it’s evident that the legislators have little awareness of this and how it works incredibly. There’s a community college in the Valley that has an honors program that has an acceptance rate to UCLA of nearly 80% because high-stats kids go to this CC, enter honors, and step into UCLA pretty easily, and with the tuition breaks for CC and the close proximity of UCLA, they’re saving a lot of $$$.

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I wanted to make a correction or two from my post above this one. The SAT and ACT was used in admissions for the 2020 incoming freshman class at UC and of course it stopped using it for the class entering in 2021 and will continue to go test-blind from 2022 onward until the university develops its own test, if it does, and to me it seems doubtful that a new test or tests will be used. I believe it should use the more specific course-related SAT II tests with some testing.

Here’s a spreadsheet referencing how different the reporting is of CDSs even among the UCs. And since UC didn’t superscore as seen in the 2020 reportage of scores, doing so would have added 5-10% more of those who scored > 1,400 for some of the schools.

Campus Year GPA Used Ave. GPA Str-A, 4.00 3.75-3.99 3.50-3.74 < 3.49 SAT, 25th SAT, 75th 1,400-1,600 1,200-1,390 1,000-1190 < 1000
UCB 2020 Unwgted 3.86 31.5% 51.7% 13.4% 3.4% 1,300 1,520 59.6% 26.9% 12.0% 1.5%
2021 Unwgted 3.87 33.0% 50.4% 12.9% 3.7% — — — — — —
UCD 2020 UCGPA 4.00 64.7% 21.2% 8.8% 5.3% 1,160 1,370 20.5% 47.6% 27.0% 4.9%
2021 No Report — — — — — — — — — —
UCI 2020 Not Rep. — — — — — 1,240 1,410 29.6% 55.2% 14.9% 0.3%
2021 No Report — — — — — — — — — — —
UCLA 2020 Unwgted 3.90 47.3% 42.2% 7.2% 3.3% 1,290 1,510 58.2% 29.0% 12.2% 0.6%
2021 Unwgted 3.92 55.4% 36.4% 5.7% 2.5% — — — — — —
UCM 2020 UCGPA 3.55 14.0% 17.0% 22.8% 46.2% 950 1,140 2.0% 13.0% 49.0% 36.0%
2021 UCGPA 3.51 12.0% 14.0% 24.0% 50.0% 1,140 1,390 23.0% 43.0% 26.0% 8.0%
UCR 2020 UCGPA 3.80 30.6% 27.0% 24.5% 17.9% 1,080 1,280 7.3% 36.1% 47.9% 8.7%
2021 No Report — — — — — — — — — — —
UCSB 2020 UCGPA 4.17 78.7% 14.3% 5.3% 1.7% 1,250 1,450 43.8% 39.0% 15.7% 1.5%
2021 No Report — — — — — — — — — — —
UCSC 2020 Unwgted 3.51 3.7% 19.3% 32.1% 44.9% 1,160 1,360 16.1% 49.4% 32.7% 1.8%
2021 Unwgted 3.63 6.3% 27.9% 40.3% 25.5% — — — — — —
UCSD 2020 UCGPA 4.09 76.6% 16.7% 5.6% 1.1% 1,280 1,460 48.0% 39.2% 12.8% 0.0%
2021 No Report — — — — — — — — — — —

And let me add that all the UCs for gpas elide the plusses and minuses from grades and only report soph and junior grades, which is why the average grade point averages could be a bit high, especially those who reported a 4.0 average, besides those UCs that report UCGPA which is a capped, weighted gpa.

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You think it’s ignorant and offensive to say a US State legislature has jurisdiction over State-run universities and has the power to pass legislation?

That strikes me as very bizarre. Why would a university, let alone a state-run one, by immune from the laws and governmental processes of the State in which they reside?

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Many states have this system with community colleges, a state university system, and a university system. Florida has it with community colleges that have direct admits to FSU, UF, and UCF; even better than California, there are CC right near these schools, sometimes even sharing facilities so that the CC students can get the ‘4 year experience’ right away. Some states have combined their state college and university systems (Maryland, Wisconsin) but many still keep them separate and offer different things at them (the old land grant colleges, professional schools) and others offer it all. Usually the state legislatures are involved because some of the schools’ budgets come from the state budget (and of course from tuition, grants, government contracts, sporting events). Public schools can’t run independent of the state legislature.

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I haven’t yet had the time, except in specific responses to a few individuals who’ve participated in this thread, to fully detail why it’s problematic to have the state legislature to become involved in things like limiting non-res enrollment at particularly UCLA, UCB, and UCSD – the supposed Big Three – which is my main concern in accordance to the title of this thread. And if I can detail all the things of which I can think imminently, I might attempt it this weekend. It will be a long list and not short as I’m wordy and I unfortunately don’t do short.

If you read my responses to these posts, you’ll find that the legislature’s actions (seemingly) mistakenly thought for some reason that the admission of the high-school cohort at each of these UCs was solely responsible for the percentage makeup of total undergrad enrollment at the three.

And again, the legislature singled out the three because as one legislator stated, these three have greater professional opportunity for their grads than the others – which is patently false – and he therefore wanted more CA residents in on the action at the three. I gave an example of a prospective UCM student with high stats versus an MIT student in professional opportunities related to a few perusals and why what he thought was not true.

One of legislature’s policies which passed in one of my responses regarding the three was to reduce each’s non-res high-school cohort by 900 students, and in turn, increase each’s CA cohorts by the same amount for 2022.

I don’t have specific information on how each will eventually deal with this legislation, but I guessed that the legislature finally saw their mistake of not including the xfer cohort which is predominantly CA-res, and therefore each of these campuses won’t apply the 900-student switch. (And UCB has other more serious problems at the moment.) I’m guessing that each will reduce International enrollment from the CCs and could still enroll 23-24% non-residents.

And this problem that the legislators didn’t see is why I presented my first spreadsheet showing the %s of both the incoming high-school grads and those who are xfers combining to attain the approximate %s of the total undergrad student body at all nine undergrad-educating UCs. In actuality, CA students take longer to graduate in both the high-school and xfer cohorts – but they also drop out in greater percentages – so I believe the effect of a 23-24% HS cohort along with a 6-8% International xfer cohort at a 2:1 HS-Xfer mix for the incoming will lead lead to a total of ~ 18% non-res enrollment for UCB’s, UCSD’s, and UCLA’s undergrad student bodies, which needs to be across the campuses’ total undergrads by 2026.

Please read my responses for other fallacious beliefs the legislators have presented. Their ignorance of UC was and is showing very badly. The administrators at each campus know what they need as far as funding, and all UCs need a certain about of full-tuition payers to allay the underfunded reimbursement provided by the state added to frozen in-state fees paid by CA students and their parents, except for the 55%.

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My wording was poor; I should have stated that CA’s CC system is the best. And I stated in a previous post that the legislators need to let the three-tier system of higher education within the state do its job. Second chances abound here with grads of Santa Monica College attending UCLA and then its med school. There are a good number of grads from CCC who attend HLS. The CC system in CA is excellent undoubtedly because CA is so rich and there are 40m people who reside in the state, but there are > 100 community colleges throughout CA. I’ve read about a CC grad in her hometown who was admitted to UCLA from a town that has a population in the hundreds. {Edit:} My bad, she dual enrolled at her CC while concurrently enrolled at her town’s high school, and entered UCLA with loads of college credit.{/}

And please refer to my post above this one as far as the ignorance of the CA state legislators regarding UC.

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@RichInPitt … Before I’m gone for the day, let me present a couple of examples using simple algebra, related to the legislators forcing the top three to comply with a cap of 18% in non-res enrollment by 2026 (and it might be 2025).

In my example, I’ll use UCLA because the university actually likes more Xfer students than the other UCs because its yield is better, etc. The problem though, is it would have to further restrict its engineering enrollment as well as other tech-type majors.

Let X determine the rate of enrollment of the non-res HS cohort.

Example A. UCLA plans to enroll a 2:1 ratio of high-school to xfer students and will cap their International enrollment at 6%, when in the past they’ve been at ~ 12-14%. International apps for the xfer class entering in 2022 have dropped by > 33%, I believe it was, so there might be a downward trend anyway.

So this presents with an equation of .33 *.06 + .67X = .18 with X =24.0%. But again CA students tarry in graduation longer than non-res students so this could easily be 25%.

Example B. UCLA, again likes to enroll more xfer students and in the past has enrolled a 60:40 mix. Let’s cap the International students at 10% for xfers. This presents an equation of .10 * .40 + .6X = .18. X = 23.3%, again, which could imply X equalling 24-25%.

This is why the legislators needed to be precise in their facts, but they weren’t because they ignored the xfer cohort, so they’re the ones who were negligent.

As you see from my first spreadsheet, a lot of UCs, not only UCLA, UCB, and UCSD want a lot non-res students to make up for the shortfall of funding of cost of undergrad education, to which they disburse the full tuition for all undergrads’ benefit, including having more profs. Most, not named UCLA, have to go predominantly for Internationals – UCB actually had a higher yield for Internationals at 53%, than for CA-residents at 47% in 2021 – and UCLA likes a mix of about 2:1 OOS/Int’l students in its frosh class.

It appears with the locked-in frozen fees at ~ $15,000/year per CA resident – again, discounting the 55% at UC who don’t pay a cent of tuition (but the shortage would still exist for them because the state’s contribution for them would still fall short of cost which is a bit over $30k/year/student because most of these students are in-state), that the shortfall/student presently I believe at ~$6k/student could grow worse because the legislature funded more CA students, but this was for an increase in number, not an increase in contribution per student. There’s a decent amount of of guessing on my part wrt this.

In answer to get more CA students, the chancellor at UCLA says he would like to open a satellite campus, and the chancellor at UCSD also said the same. But the question would be, where would it be located? Why would it be in California, which would be kind of stupid? I wouldn’t want it to be in Asia because UCLA draws well from China and India; I’d rather like to see it in Europe, South America, or Africa. That way CA students could float between the locales at both with a group studying outside the US, while the rest being in Westwood, and then switch term or year to year.