Editorial: UC must not compromise admission standards for nonresidents

By Editorial Board

Californian residents were outraged last week after the state auditor released a report noting that the University of California has recently relaxed standards for nonresident applicants.

While increasing nonresident enrollment is understandable given the UC’s budget deficit, the UC must continually ensure that equally qualified residents aren’t unfairly denied entrance to any UC campus.

The report revealed that at every campus except for UC Merced, the newest in the system, the mean of weighted high school grade point averages was lower for nonresidents than it was for residents. The discrepancy was quite large at some campuses. At UCLA, for instance, nonresidents had an average GPA of 4.12 while residents had an average GPA of 4.21.

Moreover, the audit found that the number of admitted nonresidents with test scores lower than the median scores of admitted residents has been steadily growing each year.

All of this is contrary to the University’s policy, which states that nonresident students must compare favorably to California residents at the same campus. However, that standard is too vague and obviously unenforced. That’s why the UC needs a clear policy so the pool of admitted nonresident students is at least equally, if not more, qualified than admitted residents at any given campus.

Time and time again, the UC has reasoned that revenues generated by nonresident supplemental tuition subsidizes the enrollment of residents, using out-of-state students as a piggybank. Essentially, the University hikes up rates on nonresidents – most recently increasing nonresident supplemental tuition by about $2,000 between the 2014 and 2015 academic years – and enrolls them in greater numbers to make up for insufficient state funding.

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[Source]: Daily Bruin