UC considers limiting out-of-state enrollment
By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times
The University of California is beginning to have second thoughts about its highly successful effort to bring more out-of-state students onto its campuses.
In a bid to boost revenue, the system five years ago began to aggressively recruit students from other parts of the country and from around the world. The significantly higher fees those students paid brought in about $400 million extra last year. But the effort stirred a backlash from California parents, who suspected that their children’s admissions chances were being hurt.
UC officials have taken great pains to argue that qualified California students were not losing slots to those from New York or China. But the complaints from parents and state legislators recently prompted UC President Janet Napolitano and other system leaders to consider putting limits on out-of-state enrollment.
Any such retrenchment faces its own set of complications.
In 2009, a year into the recession that badly hurt higher education funding, a commission on the future of the University of California recommended recruiting outside students whose tuition — triple what state residents pay — would help offset cuts in tax revenue.