That'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.
Mass accepting out-of-state students is most certainly not a solution, it's a band-aid (not to mention it basically screws California taxpayers). The solution would be to just increase state funding AND cap out-of-state admit rates.
It's very hard for Berkeley and UCLA to stay competitive with Stanford and Caltech (and the Ivy League) when their private counterparts not only offer better financial aid for at-need low-income students, but are also starting to be in the same ballpark for in-state middle-class students. Not only that, but the main idea behind the UC system is that it was intended for California students first.
UCLA had over 100,000 applications last year, the most out of any other school, public or private. I am completely okay with declining out-of-state students in favor of comparable California students. It's just that to afford that, the UC system needs more money. Heck, I even think price gouging out-of-state applicants could work.
> Heck, I even think price gouging out-of-state applicants could work.
From the article I gathered that's exactly what they're doing right now, and it's working great. But the optics are bad for politics so they have to ruin it.
UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said the proposed policy balanced the needs of California students with the benefits those outside students bring — diverse perspectives as well as millions in additional tuition revenue, which added up to nearly $550 million in 2016-17. Those dollars have helped UC increase its enrollment of California students to historical highs this year, Klein said, even as state support per UC student has fallen to less than half of what it was two decades ago.
Klein said the extra dollars from nonresidents — who pay about $27,000 more in annual tuition than Californians — have helped campuses recruit and retain faculty, add courses to lower overall class sizes, and purchase library materials, instructional equipment and technology. The nonresident revenue also has boosted financial aid for Californians by an average $700 per student, she said.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said the nonresident dollars provided a lifeline for the campus after state support for undergraduate education dropped significantly after the 2008 recession. Thanks to the extra money, UCLA was able to add courses, which has helped students shorten the time needed to graduate to less than four years.
> The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept.
Except that classes are overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded[1]. There might be a balance, but we're not there yet.. and what we're doing isn't working.
As in the classes are overcrowded? Insufficient housing capacity isn't such a big problem, even though it surprised me to see that putting 3 people into 1 room is still a thing in the US.
At UCLA, triple occupancy rooms now account for 73 percent of all student housing, and the Westwood campus is quickly running out of room for expansion. Because of the lack of student housing at UC Berkeley, some students are being housed at Mills College in Oakland — a 25-minute shuttle ride away.
Maybe. There is some upper-limit to the number of students the system can admit. Enrolling out-of-state students is a net gain if the they stay in California and are productive enough to outweigh the productivity of the in-state students they push out and the potentially lost productivity from those students' going to non-UC schools.
I happen to think out-of-state students are good for the system, but just to play devil's advocate here:
There may be a limit to how fast new capacity can be brought online, even with an increased budget; in that case, the increase needs to be a) slowed down to match the rate of investment, and b) distributed to the new campuses where new capacity is being added. This last is actually a result of the new policy, though I'm worried that these caps would remain even after capacity has caught up.
If you think price gouging out of state applicants could work and that is what they are already doing then why are you not in favor of accepting out of state students?
>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.
The same thing was happening at my state school when I was there. Out of state students seem like a bad solution. Are we going to end up in a system where everyone has to go "out of state" because their in state school is under funded? It is like a perverse instantiation of musical chairs, and it seems broken.
Well, _everybody_ can't, because the in-state students being displaced are those who can't afford in-state tuition (let alone the far, far higher out-of-state tuition).
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?
Decreasing state funding for student manifests itself in a lower quality of education; not that the student is unable to pay their tuition, but that the school is unable to hire enough professors.
I'm going to need to see a source on that. The US has by far the most expensive education in the world yet doesn't come close to the highest scores of any metric other than self-confidence.
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.