Nonresident enrollment will be capped at UC Berkeley and UCLA in the fall to address concerns that California students are being displaced. But the university system also does not plan to admit more residents to any of its campuses unless it gets more state funding, university President Janet Napolitano says.
Napolitano told lawmakers on Tuesday during a budget hearing in Sacramento that UC's two flagship campuses will not be allowed to increase the percentage of out-of-state and international undergraduates they enroll during the next academic year. Nonresidents made up 20 percent of the undergraduates at UCLA last fall and 23 percent at Berkeley during the last academic year.
"The two schools where the number of out-of-state students really rubs people raw are Berkeley and UCLA because they are in the highest demand," she said. "For the '15-16 school year, we will maintain the current level of out-of-state enrollment with no such guarantee for the other campuses of the University of California."
The university has been admitting more students from outside California to generate revenue because those students pay much higher tuition — $35,070 compared with the $12,192 charged to residents. Systemwide, their numbers have more than doubled in four years. Along with UCLA and Berkeley, nonresident enrollment also has increased rapidly at UC San Diego, where students from outside California accounted for one in five undergraduates in the fall.
The trend has emerged as a sticking point in negotiations over the university's budget. In November, Napolitano proposed raising tuition by 5 percent this fall and expanding undergraduate enrollment by 3,000 — one-third of the slots for Californians and two-thirds for students from abroad and out of state. Gov. Jerry Brown, however, has threatened to withhold about $120 million in state funds unless the university keeps both its tuition rates and nonresident enrollment flat.