UC Schools and California Residents

The UC schools admitted more Californians this year, as a piece in “The LA Times” points out. As they should have.

The UC schools have developed a bad rep in recent years for preferring the children of the other 49 states over the children of California. And why would a state university system prefer students from other states over their own? Because of the tuition dollars of course. Out-of-state residents pay a whole lot more for tuition than do in-state residents. Sorry, children of the California Republic. Better luck at the University of Tennessee? We’re only kidding. Or half kidding.

But there was an upswing this year! In all, 66,123 California residents earned admission to the ten UC schools this admissions cycle, marking a 15% boost from last year. That’s a significant improvement indeed. According to a piece on UC admissions in “The LA Times,” “Offers to underrepresented minorities grew significantly, with an increase for Latinos to 22,704 from 16,608 last year, representing 32% of the total class admitted. African Americans grew to 3,083 from 2,337, about 4.7% of all admitted freshmen. The number of offers to Asian Americans and whites also increased over last year. But their share of the total admitted class fell slightly to 25% for whites and 34.3% for Asian Americans.”

And so what caused the uptick? Maybe it was the state audit we wrote about weeks ago that concluded the state was discriminating against California residents or maybe it was just coincidence. But our money’s on the former. As the piece in “The LA Times” states, “The UC announcement came just days after a state audit slammed the system for hurting California students, particularly underrepresented minorities, by admitting too many applicants from other states and countries. The audit urged a cap on nonresidents, along with tougher eligibility standards for them.” Irrespective of the cause for the change, we’re glad to see the University of California admitting more California residents. It’s only fair that the children of the folks who pay taxes to the state have the same or better odds of getting into their state’s universities than do non-residents. Seems logical, no?