Cal's non-resident policy rankles educators, alumni

North Coast educators are calling a University of California policy to increase out of state student admission rates while reducing seats for California students a breach of trust with taxpayers.

"To deny admission to qualified students in state and to admit qualified students out of state is intolerable," said Carol De Bello, a guidance counselor at Analy High School. "I could understand and accept, under pressure, that they had to cut back their enrollment, but I don't think they should give preferential treatment to out-of-state students because they pay more. It doesn't feel right."

At the University of California's flagship campus in Berkeley, offers to California residents dropped 16 percent, from 11,200 this school year to 9,420 for the fall. At the same time, out-of-state and international student admission offers went up 100 percent, from 1,748 this year to 3,490 for the fall.

If students accept a place at Berkeley along the same lines, the makeup of the freshman class next fall will be 73 percent Californians, 27 percent out-of-state residents and international students. Currently 13.5 percent of Cal's freshman class are out-of-state or international students.

Non-resident students pay about three times — more than $33,000 a year — what Californians pay to attend one of the 10 University of California campuses and do not qualify for state financial aid or UC grant money.

Schools keep approximately $22,000 of that annual income per student on campus, said Susan Wilbur, director of undergraduate admissions for the university.

"Campuses get to keep that money and it helps to support the instructional program," she said. "One could argue that all students benefit by increasing non-resident students by the money that they bring with them and that campuses benefit from that."

For those students offered admission at a UC campus, fees went up 32 percent starting this fall.

Wilbur said the decision to reduce offers of admission to California students is a direct result of reduced funding from state governmento. The drop in offers does not free space for out-of-state students, she said.

"Those are two totally independent activities," she said. "Their decision to admit additional numbers (of out of state students) has nothing do with their California residents."

Willits High School principal Gordon Oslund doesn't buy it.

Willits sends as many as six of 120 or so students that graduate each year to Cal. This year two students were accepted.

The University of California has "a director of admissions who is flat-out saying this isn't displacing California kids. That is flat-out false," he said. "You have just reduced the number of California students sitting in those seats by a couple thousand. Those are 2,000 who would have been admitted one year ago today."

Oslund called the policy shortsighted.

"We are shipping our best and brightest kids to other states and privates," he said. "They are going to stay where they go. We are exporting the taxpayers of the future."

The move also touched a nerve for local Cal boosters, many of whom are active in alumni associations and scholarship drives.

Jim McAdler of Santa Rosa graduated from Cal in 1972 and heads up a local scholarship committee that collects donations locally and distrubutes them among all worthy Berkeley freshmen — no matter where they are from.

"If there are more kids from out of state being accepted and applying for this scholarship, it appears to me that it reduces the chances for our local students to be recipients," he said. "That doesn't sit well with a lot of alumni that I know because these scholarships are funded by contributions from local alumni."

The system's balance between California and out-of-state and international students is being considered by the University of California's Commission on the Future of the University and is a "work in progress," Wilbur said.

She denied that university officials are using the admission ratios to generate public outcry and draw attention to funding issues.

"No, there is absolutely no intent to do this for that purpose," she said. "This is entirely about bringing our enrollment in line with funding."