<\/p>\n
Students walk near Sather Gate at UC Berkeley. California has spent $276 million since 2022 to expand in-state enrollment at\u00a0UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego, part of a plan to admit more California students while reducing out-of-state enrollment<\/p>\n
Yalonda M. James\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
In 2022, faced with mounting criticism from California parents and students who couldn\u2019t get into the state\u2019s three premier public universities, legislators and UC officials struck a deal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n UC Berkeley<\/a>, UCLA<\/a> and UC San Diego<\/a> would admit a combined 900 more in-state students a year, and the state would up their budgets to cover the loss of revenue from non-resident students, who pay three times what in-state students pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n That deal has since cost taxpayers $276 million and allowed around 3,000 more students to enroll at the three universities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n While the costs were expected<\/a>, the number is far higher than the annual $31 million figure Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators routinely cite for funding<\/a> the in-state student expansion, a CalMatters analysis shows. Now, with one year to go in the five year plan, some are wondering whether the program\u2019s high costs should continue as-is, particularly as California faces several years of multi-billion-dollar deficits.\u00a0<\/p>\n Questioning the non-resident swap<\/p>\n At least one lawmaker and the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office are questioning the ongoing wisdom of the non-resident funding swap. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are now living with those decisions, and we need to decide whether those are decisions we want to stand by still, or perhaps there is another approach,\u201d said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a March meeting<\/a> of the budget subcommittee on education, which he chairs.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office supported enrolling more California students in 2022<\/a>, but its analysts now are proposing that the state no longer add new resident students in lieu of out-of-state students. The analyst\u2019s office says it\u2019s an unnecessary expense for multiple reasons and going forward can be made cheaper, especially given<\/a> \u201cthe state\u2019s projected budget deficits.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Instead, it proposes that the Legislature direct the UC to enroll more resident students without limiting the enrollment of non-resident students. That would cost the state $25 million annually, rather than the $61 million<\/a> predicted for the fiscal year starting July.\u00a0<\/p>\n One reason for the office\u2019s skepticism about keeping the current formula is that the three campuses were able to add thousands more undergraduates from California since the funding program began, aside from those who replaced non-residents.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n UC data shows 6,000 more Californians were enrolled at the three campuses, on top of the students added through the funding program, since the swap began. That growth was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding increases to the UC between 2022 and 2024 that lawmakers and the governor also approved in addition to the non-resident funding swap.<\/p>\n The analyst\u2019s office also indicated that the three popular UC campuses have space to continue adding students. \u201cOver the past five years, all three campuses have initiated and\/or completed housing projects adding several thousand beds\u201d and still have available classroom and lab space, a February report<\/a> from the office said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Time will tell if the Legislature will agree with the analyst\u2019s office. Lawmakers and the governor face an annual late June deadline to finalize the state budget.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s office so far supports maintaining the non-resident swap program and doesn\u2019t intend to alter the plan in its forthcoming May revision to the governor\u2019s budget proposal, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, which in effect serves as the governor\u2019s fiscal policy team.<\/p>\n In a statement, UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez underscored that the Legislature\u2019s push to drive down out-of-state enrollment has to come with costs.<\/p>\n \u201cReplacing a non-resident student with a resident student is not an even exchange absent sufficient state buyout,\u201d Rodriguez wrote to CalMatters in an April email. With the higher tuition they are charged, every out-of-state student pays for the equivalent of 2.7 California students, he wrote. The three UCs added about 300 more in-state students through the swap program than they were funded for, Rodriguez added.<\/p>\n CalMatters requested interviews with UC officials, but key personnel were not available, Rodriguez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n UC officials were ambivalent about the non-resident funding swap five years ago. While they welcomed the money, they worried that future lawmakers would back away from the promise to pay the UC for not enrolling out-of-state students.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Emphasis on Californians<\/p>\n Why do any of this? Lawmakers in 2022 wanted to curb the percentage of out-of-state undergraduates at the UC and the three campuses specifically. At the time, more than 20% of the three school\u2019s undergraduate students came from out of state. The funding swap was intended to bring the percentage down to 18% by the fifth year, which is next year. The non-resident enrollment rate currently is around 19%<\/a> at the three campuses.<\/p>\n But the decision by lawmakers to require the campuses to limit the number of out-of-state students came at a considerable cost. Had the Legislature instructed those same campuses to enroll more Californians and not cut out-of-state enrollment, the combined price tag since 2022 wouldn\u2019t be $276 million, but closer to $105 million, according to CalMatters\u2019 calculations that were validated by officials at the governor\u2019s Department of Finance as well as the UC.\u00a0<\/p>\n The final price tag to reach the out-of-state enrollment goal will be about $460 million. After that, the program will cost about $153 million a year to sustain \u2014 or less, if policymakers side with the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n In many ways, the Legislature\u2019s actions were a return to form. The state\u2019s interest in enrolling more California students in its prominent public universities is decades-old. Until the mid-2000s, UC campuses enrolled few students from outside of California. After the Great Recession prompted lawmakers to slash state spending, UC\u2019s public funding cratered. To make up the difference, UC tripled its enrollment of undergraduates from out of state.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But then the state, under the guidance of Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s five-year higher education compact, promised to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars annually in 2022 so the UC could enroll more California students at all its campuses. That\u2019s in addition to the $30 million annually to limit the out-of-state student body at Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD, the three most popular campuses.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re making good on the reason that you have a state university, which is not supposed to be a purely revenue-making machine,\u201d said Julie R. Posselt, a professor specializing in higher education issues at the University of Southern California, where she\u2019s an associate dean. \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be an engine for your state\u2019s population, economy and workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n The UC is arguably one of the best deals for state taxpayers: a world-class education that for more than half of California undergraduate students is tuition-free because of financial aid.<\/a><\/p>\n Demand for the three UCs, by the numbers<\/p>\n More than 100,000 students apply to each of three most popular UC campuses annually, the majority Californians. Lately the freshman admissions rate at UCLA has been less than 10% \u2014 not quite as exclusive as Harvard\u2019s 4% but well below the admissions rate to UCLA two decades ago, when more than a quarter were admitted.<\/p>\n UCLA is top of mind for the thousands of low-income students in Southern California that Alison De Lucca\u2019s collective serves. She\u2019s executive editor of the Southern California College Attainment Network, which is made up of dozens of nonprofits working to help students apply for college and financial aid.<\/p>\n Additional slots at UCLA matter to the region\u2019s high schoolers seeking to attend a highly selective institution. \u201cMany of them, particularly post-pandemic, would like to stay a little closer to home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t speculate on whether parents think more slots for Californians is worth the extra state spending, \u201cbut I will say that parents are quite emphatic about ensuring that their students also have the chance\u201d to gain entry at a school such as UCLA.\u00a0<\/p>\n National studies of flagship public universities also indicate that as schools rely more on increased revenue from non-resident students, overall campus diversity can decline. That\u2019s because out-of-state students \u201ctend to be richer and are less likely\u201d to be Black or Latino, one study co-written by Posselt found<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Non-resident value<\/p>\n The UC student association representing all undergraduates opposed the out-of-state funding swap when it first became policy. The association didn\u2019t want to see fewer non-residents, which it considered an attack<\/a> on the diversity of the student body. Students argued that out-of-state students add to the cultural dynamism of a campus and also contribute to the regional economy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re living here, we\u2019re voting here, we\u2019re working here, we\u2019re tenants in our campus cities. We\u2019re still treated as second-tier students,\u201d said<\/a> Riya Master in 2021, when she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from Virginia.<\/p>\n Master is now in her fourth year of attending UC San Francisco\u2019s highly ranked medical school. She gained residency as a Californian by working at a UCSF laboratory on drug discovery<\/a> after graduating from UC Berkeley. As a result, she\u2019s paying the in-state tuition rate. Her goal is to specialize in pediatrics, a field of medicine undergoing a massive shortage nationally<\/a>.<\/p>\n California enrollment grew<\/p>\n The UC system added 19,000 slots for new California undergraduates across its nine undergraduate campuses since 2022 \u2014 equal to a mid-sized UC campus without having built one. That includes about 9,000 more at the three sought-after campuses.<\/p>\n The number of non-resident undergraduates at the UC fell<\/a> by 3,500 students in that time.\u00a0<\/p>\n The growth in enrollment availability coincided with higher admissions rates for Californians, as the share of applicants gaining admission jumped from around 65% to 77% in that time.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a different story at the three most popular campuses: admission rates there haven\u2019t increased, meaning it\u2019s as difficult to get into UC Berkeley, UCLA or UC San Diego now as it was five years ago \u2014 and harder compared to nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n Even with loads of new state spending, UC reports less money per student. Though state support has jumped by more than a billion dollars since 2000<\/a>, inflation has eroded those gains while enrollment soared<\/a>. As a result, UC academic spending for every student decreased from $46,000 at the start of the millennium to $28,000 today.<\/p>\n Public universities, such as the three UC campuses, have to manage a tough balancing act, said Posselt, the USC professor. They need to preserve their academic rigor, but \u201cthey absolutely have a mandate to not become exclusionary institutions, and they must do all of that while maintaining financial solvency.\u201d<\/p>\n She said the UCs are \u201cprobably the best in the country in terms of a state system that is actively trying to maximize\u201d student access.<\/p>\n Mikhail Zinshteyn reports on higher education for CalMatters.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students walk near Sather Gate at UC Berkeley. 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