Nonresident Enrollment Rises at Three UC Campuses

By Josh Lefler

This year’s UCSD freshman class experienced a significant increase in the number of out-of-state and international students, compared to numbers from the previous year, according to data released in June. This nonresident growth follows a system-wide trend that has proven to be controversial as Californians worry about their own spots in the UC system.

According to the UC system’s preliminary headcount of intended freshman, nonresidents comprise about 33.3 percent of the incoming freshman body at UCSD, up from 27.4 percent last year. UC Irvine and UC Davis also experienced surges in the proportion of nonresidents, from 20.3 percent to 27.1 percent and 17.1 percent to 26 percent, respectively.

The enrollment of out-of-state and international students has been used as a tool to counteract the loss of public funding granted to the school by state legislators, as evident in a 2010 UC Commission report recommending that “the [University of California] allow campuses to increase the number of undergraduate nonresident students … to sustain current instructional capacity and quality.” Nonresidents pay an extra $24,024 on top of the $12,200 tuition that Californians pay, according to the information on the University of California admissions site.

The Great Recession in 2007 prompted the most recent iteration of the UC system’s funding cuts when state budgets crumpled. This was coupled with a 32-percent increase to in-state tuition in 2009.

Nathan Bostrom, the University of California’s Chief Financial Officer, explained to sources that increasing nonresident enrollment, and by extension increasing tuition revenue, has been viewed by the administration as a way to offset the loss of funding.

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[Source]: UCSD Guardian