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UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students
- smaili 10y ago> The proposed limit on students from other states and countries — which would be the first ever for the 10-campus public research university — comes after a scathing state audit last year found that UC was hurting California students by admitting too many out-of-state applicants. UC President Janet Napolitano has blasted those findings as unfair and unwarranted, but state lawmakers are requiring that UC adopt a policy restricting nonresident students in order to get an additional $18.5 million in funding this year. Isn't this blackmail? Or am I missing something?
- surrey-fringe 10y agoIt's a state school, so no.
- tptacek 10y agoNo, it's not blackmail. Funding contingent on policy changes is a norm, not just in the California but in the US and, I'm going to go out on a limb, across all western democracies. State legislators presumably have the power to compel policy changes in the UC system, so conditional funding isn't really even them playing hardball.
- labster 10y agoActually that's not true in California. The UC system is constitutionally independent from the state, and answers only to the Board of Regents. They could go full private and the California government couldn't do anything about it beyond withdrawing funding.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThat's not quite right; the University is a public trust defined in the California Constitution, which defines the role of the Board of Regents and limits legislative control over the board. The Regents could not go "full private" as that would violate the Constitution. Also, the Board of Regents consists almost entirely of 7 government officials and 18 gubernatorial appointees (the exceptions being two members representing alumni, a faculty member, a student member, and the current or acting President of the University.)
- adrenalinelol 10y agoThey aren't entitled to state funds if they ignore the state's wishes. If they want full autonomy they need to go private.
- tptacek 10y agoI don't believe "going private" is an option for any of the UC schools.
- Cerium 10y agoSo I guess that means they have to follow the wishes of their funding source.
- tptacek 10y agoIt's a little bit more complicated than "they're government employees", but not much more. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS§ionNum=SEC.%209.&article=IX https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- remarkEon 10y agoNot completely accurate. UCLA Anderson "went private" a few years ago, though that appears to only mean that it doesn't rely on state funding for operations - it's still a public institution. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-26/ucla-wins-right-to-take-mba-program-private https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-26/ucla-wins...
- qntty 10y agoThe state is able to make funding contingent. The state doesn't want to own up to the fact that UC is so underfunded that its struggling to fulfill its purpose of educating Californians. To get more money, UC turns to admitting more students who can pay full price. So the solution by lawmakers is to solve the symptom (too few students from California) rather than the problem (not enough money to support lots of in-state students).You can bet that when UC pushes back against being squeezed even more by the state, the state will use it as an excuse to cut funding more.
- handedness 10y agoThe UC system spends $120K/year per student, roughly 10x the tuition and fees a California resident will pay to attend. The UC system also has an absurdly high ratio of administrative staff to academic staff, and administrative staff to undergraduates. It has become something of a jobs program for the state of California, and is the third-largest employer of a state that is the 6th-largest economy in the world. Something has to give.
- laurencerowe 10y agoI don't know where your $120K/year per student figure comes from, but it seems highly misleading. The most recent figures I could find (AY 2012-2013) put the cost at $16,890. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-educational-expenses-lower-today-20-years-ago-report-finds https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-educational-e... Research focussed universities like UC do of course spend a lot more on research, but those activities have their own dedicated funding streams, mostly Federal grants.
- handedness 10y agoThat core fund report seems to be missing something, as if the total total per-student cost were $16,890, the vast majority of that would be covered by the current $12.3K annual tuition (to say nothing of +$27K from out-of-state students). The UC system would therefore be unlikely to have the underfunded pension problem they currently face, for example. Their annual budget is pushing $30B, and their student population–expensive post-graduates included–clocks in at around a quarter million. Those numbers have changed from year to year, but last I checked, their total expenditures came out to around $120K/student. Texas A&M by comparison is around $90K/student, with Harvard pushing $200K (their tuition is 5x what the UC system's is, for comparison).
- tzs 10y agoI think you may have mixed up blackmail and extortion. Blackmail is demanding money in return for not revealing someone's secrets. Extortion is obtaining something through force or threats.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Isn't this blackmail? Or am I missing something? Blackmail is demanding money, etc., under the threat of revealing saving information. Offering money in exchange for doing something that the offering party wants isn't blackmail, or even anything similar.
- yazaddaruvala 10y agoGiven that UC needs the funding to stay operational or competitive: It is extortion.
- dragonwriter 10y agoIt's an $18.5 million piece of the ~$30 billion UC budget; it's not even 0.1%. It's hardly as critical as you are trying to paint it.
- jldugger 10y agoUC is a public institution. It's arm-twisting, but a far cry from the crime of demanding compensation in exchange for not revealing damaging information. And arguably, it's an exchange; implementing the policy may cost the University system some tuition dollars, and some amount of funding for this loss seems justified. A lot of political funding works this way. The drinking age in the US was set to 21 by the Federal government mandating that no state with an age lower than that would get their slice of highway funding.
- forrestthewoods 10y agoGood. State universities are perversely incentivized to prefer higher paying students from out-of-state and international. University of Washington, the state's top school, is now 1/3 non-state residents. It's a serious problem.
- tptacek 10y agoIt's not perverse if out-of-state students fund reduced tuition for in-state students. But apparently that wasn't happening in the UC system.
- yaacov 10y agoI'm an undergraduate at a UC school right now, and I can tell you that that is happening in the UC system. State funding per student has collapsed [1] and campuses are scrambling to cover the costs. One way to do that is by increasing tuition, and another is by admitting out-of-state students who pay massive premiums to attend the university. Out of state students pay about $50k/yr to attend a UC. In-state students pay about $12K, and the UC spends a bit over $30k per student. That means that each out-of-state student provides enough revenue to pay for an additional in-state student! Absent additional state funding (lol), an enrollment cap would necessarily result in tuition increases. I really really hope it doesn't get passed. [1] http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119 http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119
- reneherse 10y ago>Absent additional state funding (lol), an enrollment cap would necessarily result in tuition increases. I really really hope it doesn't get passed. Or, how about the UC system reduces spending per student?
- yaacov 10y agoThey already spend less than most comparably-ranked universities. If you take a look at the link I posted on the top-level comment, you'll see that expenses per student have been increasing pretty slowly. Of course, waste should still be cut if it exists. Are there any specific programs that you think should have their funding reduced?
- azernik 10y agoA couple of important notes FTA: 1) the cap is currently not limiting for the system as a whole, as the proportion is around 16% 2) It also includes a per-campus 20% cap, with raised caps for campuses that are already above 20%. So Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD will be prevented from raising their nonresident proportions, and new growth will be redirected to schools like Merced (only 1% nonresident students). My personal observation: no evidence is presented that nonresident admissions reduce the absolute number of Californians the system can support.
- yaacov 10y agoThat's because nonresident admissions don't reduce the absolute number of Californians the system can support! They pay much more in tuition than the UC spends on their education, and much of the remainder gets spent on in-state residents. In-state admissions have fallen at highly competitive schools like UCLA not because out-of-state students are taking up more of a set number of spots, but because the amount of in-state students whose educations the UC can afford to subsidize has fallen because of decreasing state funding per student. Declining admit rates of in-state students is a problem, but out-of-state students are part of the solution. I really, really hope this proposal doesn't get passed.
- swuecho 10y agoA lot people currently think it is a good investment to go UC for such amount of money. But the reality might be otherwise. Few years later, UC might find it is hard to attract enough out-states students. so I do not think the limit matters.
- imjustsaying 10y ago>decreasing state funding per student. I don't get this. Not only can a person who has pauper parents afford tuition + cash left over to pay the rent at any state school in the nation due to Pell Grants and subsidized student loans, but in California you still get additional state grants on top of that. Not to mention all the other freebies that California dumps on its residents. If you mean to say that kids aren't going to college because they can't afford it, I don't buy it for one second. That is unless the student's parents have a job that gives a middle class income, disqualifying the student from getting a Pell Grant, and not contributing towards the education costs. Is that what you're referring to?
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- dbcooper 10y agonb. This only applies to undergraduate students.
- alansammarone 10y agoI don't understand why is it ok for a university to serve a political purpose. A university is a place in which science is done, nothing more. No matter by whom.
- DamnYuppie 10y agoUniversity's should do more than science. Ideally they should be institutions of higher learning. This should include things beyond just STEM. Languages, history, religion, philosophy, literature, and on and on.
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- smelly_turd 10y agoIn this situation I don't think it's possible to not political. Aren't they being political by accepting out of state students who pay more money? Are they looking at applicants bank accounts or are they looking for applicants that would be successful and contribute to the diversity of the school? UC makes the claim that they out-of-state funding creates more spots for in-state applicants, while the audit says otherwise. Both are plausible explanations, but we need some actual numbers in order to determine whether having a bias toward accepting more out-of-state applicants really does increase in-state applicant admissions.
- Daishiman 10y agoEducation policy is driven by politics. Saying that it's apolitical is just ignoring that aspect of reality.
- eruditely 10y agoThe review that was done awhile ago showed that nonresidents reduced the amount of residents in the program, any attempt to merely walk-over the issue is a sign that you are lying and speaking in poor faith. As if there never was any negative set of circumstances that could be predicated fundamentally on the idea that <outsiders> did in <Californian Residents/Insiders> people from here, all that talk, and all that pretense when you rap to just your favorite music video......
- scythe 10y ago>The review that was done awhile ago showed that nonresidents reduced the amount of residents in the program Cf. what the audit actually found: >The audit found that out-of-state applicants benefited from lowered admission standards [italics mine], while California students increasingly were turned away from their campus of choice. The only reason to give out-of-state students lower admission standards than in-state students is if you're not merely admitting them but preferring them, and the obvious motive in preferring out-of-state students is that they pay five times as much if not more in tuition compared to in-state students. One way to evaluate proposed solutions to problems is "can the proposed solution solve the problem?"; if the out-of-state enrollment in 2006 was 5.5% and in 2016 was 15% and the cap is 20% (these are the real numbers) then obviously the proposed solution cannot solve the problem and it is frankly questionable whether it is even a legitimate attempt to solve the problem. It appears to instead be a way to politically grandstand by scapegoating the UC admissions departments and the out-of-state students instead of admitting there's a funding problem. The $18M in funding is also a pittance: >UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said the proposed policy balanced the needs of California students with the benefits that nonresident students bring — diverse perspectives as well as millions in additional tuition revenue, which added up to nearly $550 million in 2016-17. Increasing the proportion of out-of-state students by 1% here appears to bring in about $50 million. There is not even a clear financial incentive for the UC system to bother following this directive! They would make more money by ignoring it. The financial data indicates that the UC system will likely ignore this directive. Considering that the State used a tiny carrot instead of a big stick, they probably know this. If the State were serious in addressing this problem they could threaten to fine the UC system for discriminating against local students as was found in the audit. However this would kill the "golden goose" and result in drastic underfunding of the system because out-of-state students are currently covering a budget gap way bigger than this proposal could ever address. So the legislature is not going to do that. They made this proposal to rile up gullible Californian nativists who think outsiders are the source of all their problems, and you fell for it.
- pmorici 10y agoNever knew CA was so anti-immigrant.
- vmarsy 10y ago> Her own child was turned down by her top three UC choices two years ago, despite SAT scores and a grade point average above the 90th percentile. Her daughter ended up at a fourth UC campus. Why not simply follows Texas' Top 10% Rule[1] ? > The law guarantees Texas students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class automatic admission to all state-funded universities This top 10% rule, (in conjunction with a minimum SAT to avoid bad schools) would solve that mom problem (assuming the child is above the 90th percentile for that particular school). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_588 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_588
- flat6turbo 10y agobecause there's too many people in california to do that. there is a similar heuristic in place, but of course, the top 3 UC's is the same for everyone (berkeley, LA, SD) http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/california-residents/admissions-index/ http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/califor...
- flukus 10y agoSounds like a scheme to improve enrollments for lower quality schools.
- ben_jones 10y agoIt also would give an unfair advantage to students of means who can afford tutors to write admissions essays, do there homework, or SAT prep programs that drill test taking strategies and rote memorization of common answers. Maybe it would be better still, when I was in school I just saw too much of this.
- zvpxdlk 10y agoWhy not just accept the brightest students with the best resumes?
- saagarjha 10y agoOut of state students pay more in tuition as compared to in-state students.
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