Legislators Want The University Of California To Enroll More In-State Students. It’s Been Slow Going

LAist

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

May 4, 2023

In March 2016, a California state audit detailed how in response to budget cuts, the prestigious University of California system’s overreliance on non-California students “undermined its commitment to resident students.”

“To add insult to injury, we weren’t accepting as many Californians and we were accepting more and more international and out of state students,” said California Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, who is chair of the assembly’s budget subcommittee No. 2 on education finance.

The UC 2030 plan, rolled out last summer — and after six years of little movement — is, in part, a response to that outcry. The first school year under the plan was a slow one.

Key elements of the plan

Here’s what the UC 2030 plan seeks to do:

• Enroll more students

• Cut non-resident (international and out-of-state) admission

• Reduce time to graduation

• Expand offerings at off-campus centers

• Offer more online classes

The outcome of those efforts in the next seven years, UC predicts, will lead to 23,000 more students at the system’s 10 campuses, but that could grow by 10,000 more if Sacramento gives UC more funding.

“Our goal all along has been to grow in a way that serves the State of California and meets its future education and workforce needs, while being responsive to each of the communities we call home,” UC President Michael Drake told UC Regents last year after the plan’s roll out.

As CalMatters detailed in 2021, students themselves are opposed to decreasing representation of out-of-state students, and compensating for the higher tuition paid by nonresidents requires a lot of stressful math.

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