UC system betrays California students
April 22, 2015
This year, Californian high school graduates received an unprecedented number of waitlists and rejections from UC schools. With state budget cuts on the rise, the UC system was forced to limit the number of in-state admisions while it increased enrollment for nonresident students in order to compensate for the financial deficit.
Even so, it isn’t right for Californian students to be displaced within their own state. It is both disheartening and infuriating to see that well-qualified Californian students have narrower chances of being accepted to UC schools than non-resident students.
Californian students have every right to be angry upon discovering that the University of California is giving preferential treatment to out-of-state students instead to those of whom they are suppose to put first. The UC system was established with the intent of providing high quality, affordable education to Californians—it should adopt a solution while remaining loyal to its purpose.
The president of the University of California announced on March 31 that UC schools will cap in-state enrollments until the pending budget negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown show signs of being enacted.
“We will not be admitting students that we don’t know that we actually have funding for,” Janet Napolitano said in an interview with the Sacramento Bee.
The UC is in the midst of a disagreement with Gov. Brown over a plan to increase tuition by 5 percent over the next five years if state funding does not provide enough revenue.
Because undergraduates from other states pay an additional $24,024 in supplemental tuition, the University of California argues that financially, it is necessary to admit more nonresident students to support spots for in-state students.
Yet, this shouldn’t be the solution to the problem. The University of California should be actively working to make compromises with Gov. Brown to increase funds.
As our universities are being wracked with budget cuts, the chances of California high school seniors gaining admission to the University of California are worsening each year. This causes families and some state lawmakers to question whether the UC system is truly loyal to its mission of providing quality and affordable education to Californians.
Students are angrily protesting that the rise in tuition costs are not funding the classrooms, but instead used to finance the salaries of UC administrators.
Gov. Brown needs to step up and come to an agreement with the University of California in respect to the negotiations for more funding. As these financial issues drag on, the admission statuses of Californian students to UCs are being withheld. We begin to ask whether the University of California is still a system working to provide higher educational opportunities for our Californian students or whether it has become an institution solely of monetary interests.
