It’s harder now for Calif. students to get into public colleges

Students at California State University in Sacramento. CSU PHOTO

LOS ANGELES–Tighter admissions standards and lack of state funding are making it more difficult for California high school students to be accepted into the state’s public university system, a new report found.

The Campaign for College Opportunity on Monday, November 30, released “Access Denied: Rising Selectivity at California’s Public Universities,” which revealed that the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems lack the capacity, among other factors, to serve the state’s growing population of college-eligible and ready students, forcing campuses to turn away a significant portion of applicants.

California is currently ranked 49th in the country in the percentage of undergraduate students enrolled in a four-year university.

The report went on to note, “when our four-year public university system cannot serve all qualified California students, we produce fewer bachelor’s degree holders and ultimately hurt the economy and threaten the future of our state.”

The findings come amid the application deadline for fall 2016 admission to the UC and CSU campuses. The UC system expects about 200,000 applications for admission, while CSU anticipates 800,000, according to EdSource.

More foreign students

For fall 2015, 60 percent of California residents who applied were accepted by UC schools (down from 63 percent the previous year), while about three-quarters were admitted into CSU schools. At CSU, 139,697 eligible students were turned away between 2009 and 2014.

In contrast, 62.2 percent of international students were accepted by UC schools, seeing an increase from 60.1 percent, a Reuters report stated.

Given the budget cuts at UC and CSU campuses, critics allege that the public universities are instead accepting out-of-state and international students, who pay more in tuition.

The average grade point average (GPA) of admitted students to six of the nine UC campuses in 2014 was over a 4.0. The median SAT score of admitted students to UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego was less than 400 points away from a perfect score. The gap between the number of UC applicants and those admitted has more than doubled between 1996 and 2013.

“It is a shame that hard-working, talented California students need to be virtually perfect to get a spot at the University of California. It should not be more difficult for a student to enroll directly in a four-year university than it was for previous generations,” Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said.

Rising admissions standards

Students applying to the CSU system find a similar challenge of rising admissions standards. Six of the 23 campuses now require a higher GPA and/or SAT score than the CSU baseline eligibility requirements. Within the CSU campuses, impacted majors that require a higher GPA and/or SAT score have increased by 135 percent since 2004.

“CSU denying 30,000 eligible students last year is heartbreaking for all the talented students whose only opportunity to succeed professionally relies on their ability to access a high quality and affordable university education,” said Ivna Gusmao, a recently retired college counselor from Reseda High School who has been serving students in the Los Angeles public schools for over 30 years, in a statement. “Getting into the UC for students today is more like playing the lottery. College counselors can no longer tell students with any accuracy where they are likely to get in even if they had a 5.0 GPA.”

Outdated Master Plan

The report also pointed out that the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education — which adapts to California’s population growth and is still the current structure being used — is outdated. The plan envisioned the public university system to be free and available for all qualified California residents and placed caps on admission to UC and CSU schools at the top 12.5 percent and top 33 percent, respectively, of state students based on academic achievement.

However, funding for the public universities has dropped — an estimated $1 billion lost between 2006 and 2014 — at the expense of raising tuition, increasing class sizes and decreasing enrollment.

Figures show that the cost to attend a UC has increased by 200 percent in the past 15 years. For the 2015-16 school year, the estimated average cost is $29,500 for those living off campus and $33,600 for those living on campus, according to the UC Admissions website.

“Many more students struggle to pay tuition and fees that have skyrocketed in recent years. It is imperative that California reinvest in its public higher education system so that California youth from all backgrounds, especially low-income students of color, have equal opportunity to enroll in and graduate from the state’s four-year universities,” Stewart Kwoh, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, said.

In November, UC President Janet Napolitano held an ethnic media roundtable to discuss perceptions and barriers faced by minority communities in applying to the university system.

Addressing the costs, Napolitano cited that more than half of California resident students at UCs pay no tuition because of programs that cover that cost for families that make $80,000 or less. Pell Grants, which offer awards of up to $5,775, depending on family income, are also options; 41 percent of UC students are benefitting from them. 

Economic future affected

“The state’s economic future depends on our students being able to access, afford and complete a postsecondary degree,” said California State Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León in a statement reacting to the report.

He further stated: “A majority of the 6 million children attending our K-12 public schools are low-income and underrepresented minorities, and California must take a more strategic approach to establish a pipeline from our K-12 school system to our higher education institutions.”

With its findings, the Campaign for College Opportunity has proposed that Governor Jerry Brown and state lawmakers do a strategic overhaul to prioritize funding for public higher education, so that more California students are accepted into the public four-year universities.

Further, the report called for caps on the number of out-of-state and international students who are admitted.

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