While many high school seniors have already sent in deposits to their chosen colleges and are using their remaining days in high school classrooms dreaming about their upcoming college life, students who applied to University of California schools are still in limbo.
The UC system received a record number of applications this year, but the number of students who will actually receive acceptance letters is still up in the air.
This indecision stems from a differing of opinions between university President Janet Napolitano and Gov. Jerry Brown over the state’s responsibility to provide a college education for in-state students.
Napolitano thinks the California government is not providing the UC system with proper funding and has threatened to raise tuition at UC schools by 5 percent if Brown does not give the system more funding.
Brown has plans to give the system $120 million, but only if the tuition and the non-resident enrollment rates don’t change.
If Brown does not come through with the money, the UC system will be unable to enroll more California students in the fall and the enrollment of out-of-state students at UCLA and UC-Berkeley will be capped.
During the last academic year, non-California residents made up 20 percent of undergraduates at UCLA and 23 percent at Berkeley. This large population of non-residents is the result of the disparity between in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition: $12,192 compared with $35,070.
UC system schools are not new to budget constraints.
Between 2008 and 2012, UC’s state funding dropped by about 27 percent, forcing schools to implement a furlough program for their staff and nearly double tuition over that period.
UC schools are fighting the same budget battle now that they were in 2008 and there aren’t any long-time solutions in sight.
state@dailytarheel.com
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