Our best guess, based on comments made by Regent Cohen, a former budget director for the state, is that this matter has been percolating at the Dept. of Finance for some time and that someone stuck it into the governor's budget proposal.
The LA Times now joins the LAO and others in raising questions. It's worth noting that budgets are ultimately enacted by the legislature and that won't happen until June.
For thousands of community college students who vie each year to transfer to ultracompetitive UCLA, it sounds like a dream: Complete required coursework, meet a specified grade-point average and earn guaranteed admission to the most popular university in the nation. That’s what Gov. Gavin Newsom directed UCLA to do in his proposed budget last month — or risk losing $20 million in state funding. Newsom, along with legislators and many equity advocates, have been pushing the University of California to simplify its transfer process and widen entry to more state students, especially at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, the system’s three most selective campuses.
Newsom’s proposal blindsided UCLA and set off a scramble to understand the governor’s intent. Neither Newsom’s office nor the state Department of Finance responded to a request for comment about the directive, which lacked details such as admission targets...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-21/conflict-brews-over-governors-plan-for-ucla-guaranteed-transfer-student-admission.
The fact that there are no details available suggest that it was not only UCLA that was "blindsided," the governor may have been blindsided by his own Dept. of Finance. If that is the case, the proposal may quietly disappear from the governor's May Revise budget proposal without further explanation. And someone at the Dept. of Finance may be called on the carpet - or worse.
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