A state proposal to cap the University of California’s number of nonresident students is both untimely and unreasonable.
Major cuts in state support in recent years have caused UC administrators to seek alternate methods of funding. One of the main methods has been to increase nonresident student enrollment.
This board does not support the measure proposed by Sen. Michael Rubio last week, which calls for a cap on nonresident students in the UC.
Should this measure pass, each UC campus would have to cap its nonresident student population at 10 percent, in addition to limiting the number of nonresidents to 10 percent of each incoming freshman class.
Some popular UC campuses, such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, have already exceeded this 10 percent quota.
In the fall of 2011, out-of-state and international students comprised nearly 17 percent of the freshman class at UCLA.
To its credit, the UC has not yet admitted more out-of-state students at the expense of California residents. The number of in-state residents enrolling at the UC has remained constant. For that reason, the legislation seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a heavily publicized trend.
It is clear UCLA, and the University of California as a whole, relies heavily on nonresident student support as a means of funding. But with state support even more tentative with unknowns surrounding Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax measure, the UC has to make ends meet on its own.
It is unreasonable for the state to limit nonresident enrollment, especially when the number of California residents at the UC has not decreased. Constraining the number of nonresident student enrollment each year approaches micromanagement.
The University has taken steps to curtail its reliance on this means of funding, as it currently has a policy in place that limits out of state enrollment to 10 percent of the student population system-wide.
With the number of system-wide nonresident students coming in at about 7 percent, the UC is well under that cap.
Though some larger schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley have a nonresident student population that exceeds 10 percent, the state should recognize that the needs of individual UC campuses vary, and should not apply a blanket solution to them collectively.
Legislators should give UC administrators the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the number of nonresident students enrolling in the system and ways of seeking non-state sources of revenue.
Until the state proves to be a more reliable partner in UC financial support, let the University work out its problems on its own.
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the editorial board