Freshmen enrollment across the UC system will be cut by thousands beginning next school year if the UC Regents decide tomorrow to pass a proposed enrollment reduction plan.
Enrollment of new freshmen resident students will be reduced by 2,300 for the 2009-2010 school year, according to the proposal, which aims to address the lack of adequate state funding for UC students.
Limiting enrollment is one of many options that the regents will consider in order to address the current budget crisis, said D’Artagnan Scorza, student-regent designate.
“It is one option that we must look at, but I don’t think that it is a solution to many of the problems that we are facing,” he said.
The UC currently enrolls about 11,000 students who were admitted without the necessary state funding. Thus, the University is not fully able to provide sufficient faculty and instructional support for new students, according to the UC Regents Web site.
Under the proposed plan, the overall number of enrolled students will still increase in the short term, but it is anticipated that by limiting freshmen enrollment, the number of students will begin to decrease after a few years, according to the UC Regents Web site.
This reduction of enrolled students will, in the long run, decrease the number of students not accounted for in the state budget, according to the proposal.
But this plan may be inefficient, considering that the main problem facing the university is underfunding, as opposed to over-enrollment, Scorza said.
“We have a capacity for all of these students, but the only problem is that we don’t have the funds to accommodate them,” he said.
Scorza said that the regents are considering other options to confront the budget crisis facing the university. Options include increasing tuition for out-of-state students and raising educational fees for all students. But, he said, none of these solutions will completely resolve the budget problems that the university is facing.
Although the proposal, if passed, would reduce the number of freshmen students admitted, it would increase the number of transfer students enrolled by 500. This, according to the proposal, would ensure that all California residents have access to a UC degree. The number of graduate students enrolled would remain the same.
However, UCLA and UC Berkeley applicants have no reason to worry about the proposed changes because the reductions in enrollment would not affect either of those two campuses, due to the higher demand that they experience.
One point of concern addressed in the proposal is the effect that the enrollment limit would have on underrepresented minority students and students from low-income families.
Analyses conducted by the university showed that a reduction of 3,100 students would reduce the proportion of underrepresented minority students by about 0.3 percent.
“The proposed changes could negatively impact diversity, because with less spots available, less people will make it in. And what will happen to the people who aren’t able to make it in?” Scorza said.
Charles Alexander, the director of the Academic Advancement Program at UCLA, said that mechanisms should be put into place to ensure that the effect of reduced enrollment on students from low-income families would be minimal. He noted that the other options for alleviating the current budget crisis weren’t any more appealing than reducing enrollment.
“I don’t think that increasing student fees would be a good option either. It would still have an adverse effect on low-income families unless the increased fees go to offset costs for those students who can’t afford to pay for their total education,” he said.
Also to be discussed at the meeting will be a proposal to freeze the salaries on members of the Senior Management Group, including President Mark Yudof, university chancellors, and other high-ranking university officials. President Yudof drafted the proposal.
The elimination of SMG equity and merit increases, which is proposed in the plan, would avoid future expenditure of about $1.3 million per year, said Paul Schwartz, spokesman for the UC Office of the President.
The plan would also limit participation in the Staff Development and Recognition Program, which Schwartz said is a system-wide program to recognize and reward employee performance. Under the terms of the proposal, only non-SMG employees who make less that $100,000 would be eligible for SDRP.
The Office of the President has already made reductions to save about $30 million this year, with additional reductions to be made in the coming months.
“The Office of the President has reduced spending through a combination of reducing staff, leaving certain positions vacant, and moving some programs at UCOP to other campuses,” he said.