They keep coming

EdSource notes that despite the recent federal restrictions on international student visas, enrollment of international students at UC has not fallen off:

...According to preliminary fall admission data, UC admitted its largest class of first-year students this year, including 23,569 international students. That figure reflects an 8% increase in admitted foreign students compared to last year, though fewer are expected to enroll at UC campuses. The system will release its Fall 2026 enrollment figures in December or January, a UC spokesperson said.

Other California universities have seen drops in enrollment. At the University of Southern California, enrollment of international students dropped by 3% last year. And at the California State University system, where international students make up a smaller portion of the student body compared to UC, foreign enrollment had been declining years before Trump took office. 

About 14% of UC’s enrollees are international students, according to PPIC. These students pay more in supplemental tuition than California residents, which helps subsidize the cost of college for in-state residents. For California residents, UC’s tuition for the 2027-28 school year costs $16,278 per year. For nonresident and international students, the annual cost of tuition is $57,300...

Full story at https://edsource.org/2026/trump-student-visa-policy-impact/764348.

It is possible, of course, that the impact of restrictions is delayed. We won't have data on UC enrollment for the current academic year for several months.

Second thoughts at the legislature

The governor will soon be presenting his May Revise budget proposal. From the perspective of the legislature, despite all the PR that UC gives its research agenda, the typical legislator hears from parents whose kids didn't get into the UC of their choice. The fact that what gives prestige to the campuses that are disappointing parents is research doesn't register. 

Back in the Good Old Days, people are told - maybe by grandparents - it was easy to get into, say, UCLA. Now it is hard. It is also true, however, that the population of California has grown by a factor of around 2.5 since 1960, the date of the Master Plan. And more kids finish high school and want to go to college now. 

It is also true that the state has a lot more on its plate than it did in the early 1960s. Example: The state didn't worry about funding Medi-Cal back then because there was no Medi-Cal. So, despite the Master Plan's promise of no tuition, i.e., full state funding, UC gets a mix of tuition and funding. It gets a lot more money from out-of-state and international students than it does from in-state enrollees. 

To make room for more in-state students at the prestige campuses, the state required fewer out-of-state admissions and promised to reimburse UC for the loss or revenue. But that turns out to be expensive. So now the legislature is having second thoughts about the deal. From CalMatters:

In 2022, faced with mounting criticism from California parents and students who couldn’t get into the state’s three premier public universities, legislators and UC officials struck a deal. UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego would admit a combined 900 more in-state students a year, and the state would up their budgets to cover the loss of revenue from non-resident students, who pay three times what in-state students pay. 

That deal has since cost taxpayers $276 million and allowed around 3,000 more students to enroll at the three universities. While the costs were expected, the number is far higher than the annual $31 million figure Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators routinely cite for funding the in-state student expansion, a CalMatters analysis shows. Now, with one year to go in the five-year plan, some are wondering whether the program’s high costs should continue as-is, particularly as California faces several years of multibillion-dollar deficits...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2026/04/uc-admission/. (Dan Hare was nice enough to forward this article to yours truly.)

The fact is that you can always say that the marginal cost of adding one more kid in the back of the lecture hall is essentially zero. But that doesn't mean that adding thousands more will cost zero. And from UC's perspective, even if it were zero, those seats in the lecture hall could go to out-of-state students who pay more than in-state students. Since there are many in-state kids turned away, and many out-of-state kids turned away, the opportunity cost for UC of a seat is the difference between what the two kinds of students pay.

It has always been the case that you could "process" lots more undergraduate students cheaply. That's what CSU does. That's what the community colleges do. And that's why - as we have said on this blog umpteen times - the state needs a new Master Plan in which all the trade-offs are thrashed out rather ad hoc legislative directives.

Word Shift

As blog readers will likely know, UC-San Diego received much bad press when an internal report noted that many incoming freshmen were arriving without a working knowledge of high school math.*

Now the systemwide Academic Senate is being asked to deal with recommendations to deal with the issue.** Comments are due May 19.

Some of the proposed changes seem to be to find euphemisms for the word "remedial." Coursework in that category is now referred to using phrases such as "pre-college-level preparatory." However, the policy remains that college credit is not to be given for such courses. 

Much of the proposal is focused on clarifying responsibility and making technical updates with regard to writing courses. 

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*Example: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/math-decline-ucsd/684973/.

**https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/council-chair-systemwide-senate-review-revisions-sbl-192-sr-636-761.pdf.

The Slide

From the San Francisco Chronicle: For the first time since the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, undergraduate computer science enrollment across the UC system declined in 2025, data show. Only one UC has defied the downward trend: UC San Diego, the sole campus to have launched an AI major. David Reynaldo,the founder of admissions consultancy College Zoom, said he’s seen this play out in his work with students applying to college. But the biggest shift, he said, is coming from parents.

In past years, parents saw a computer science degree as a clear path to a high-paying job: They might push their children to apply and enroll in those programs. But now those parents are turning toward hard, physical sciences, like mechanical or electrical engineering, as the better option. “Parental pressure plays a lot — a lot, a lot, a lot — on the kids,” he said.

UC admissions officers first flagged the shift in September at a college counselors conference in San Jose. “The biggest surprise is us trying to fill computer science,” UC Santa Barbara’s admissions director, Cuka Acosta, told a roomful of student advisers from high schools and community colleges. “Changing times! Students are looking at more AI programs.”

It’s not just the UCs. A recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that enrollment in computer science programs declined across different types of institutions in the fall...

Full story https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-major-computer-science-ai-21284464.php.

UC Enrollment

Headcount numbers for UC and the campuses were released last Thursday. A summary is above.

Detailed information is at:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/fall-enrollment-glance. 

Note: The total headcount for UCLA was 47,435, up slightly from the prior year.

Lawsuit Targets UC, Others

From the NY Times: The Justice Department sued California in federal court on Thursday, claiming that providing in-state college tuition to unauthorized students is illegal and discriminates against Americans from out of state who pay higher rates. 

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, is the latest action by the Trump administration against California... The complaint refers to California’s exemption from out-of-state rates for applicants, including undocumented students, who have graduated from the state’s high schools or meet education requirements at other institutions in the state. It asks the court to declare this rule unconstitutional and invalid, and to bar the defendants from enforcing it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California; Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general; the University of California system; and California Community Colleges are listed among the defendants. Rachel Zaentz, a University of California spokeswoman, said it followed state and federal laws regarding eligibility for in-state tuition, financial aid and scholarships...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/us/politics/ucla-undocumented-students-tuition-doj-lawsuit-california.html.

Turn Around

From the Daily Princetonian: Princeton will require undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores beginning with the 2027–28 admission cycle, the University announced Thursday. The decision will end a seven-year stint of test-optional undergraduate admissions that began during the pandemic. Several peer institutions including Harvard, Penn, and Brown, have announced in the past year and a half that they would require standardized tests, with changes set to take place in the application cycles during the 2024–25 or 2025–26 school years. Yale, meanwhile, has adopted a test-flexible policy allowing students to choose from SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to submit. Columbia has become permanently test-optional. 

Many peer institutions had announced these changes in March or April to begin in the application cycle the next fall. [Princeton] University’s announcement is significantly early in comparison, applicable beginning with the entering Class of 2032, students who will matriculate two admissions cycles from now in the fall of 2028. Like many of its peers, the University said that test scores helped predict academic success among undergraduates...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/10/princeton-news-sat-act-standardized-test-optional-required-admissions.

Note that the UC Regents dropped testing despite having commissioned a Senate report which suggested otherwise. Maybe now is the time to reconsider. Of course, the Regents have a lot on their plates at the moment. And folks don't generally like to consider the possibility that maybe in the past they made a mistake.

Vulnerability to Pressure - Part 2

Above is an updated (fall 2024) and more complete chart for UC international enrollment from the San Francisco Chronicle. From the same article:

With tens of thousands of students from other countries studying at University of California campuses, UC officials say they are “very concerned” about President Donald Trump’s targeting of international enrollment, which could put a dent in colleges' budgets, slow research and harm the state economy.  On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.” Also this week, Trump paused new student visa interviews, and he dangled the idea of a 15% cap on international enrollment.  

About 41,000 international students study at UC’s 10 campuses, about 13% of systemwide  enrollment. Nearly a third of UC graduate students, 31%, are from another country, while 9% of undergraduates are from outside the U.S. China accounts for the greatest share of international students at UC by far — 43%...

International students don’t qualify for federal student aid, so the vast majority pay full tuition. That’s a lucrative source of revenue for many universities, especially UC campuses, where taxpayers and the university help subsidize the tuition of state residents. Nonresidents pay three times the in-state rate. But the research university system says it also depends upon foreign students for a robust exchange of ideas — academic and cultural. “The University of California is very concerned about the U.S. State Department’s action to pause new interview appointments for applicants for student and exchange visas and the direct impact it will have on our international students, scholars and faculty,” UC officials said through a spokesperson...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/trump-uc-international-students-risk-20349600.php.

Vulnerability to Pressure

From the NY Times: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/upshot/harvard-trump-international-students.html 

Note that the UCs that are listed are all below 20%. In part, these lower percentages are due to pressure from the legislature to reserve slots for in-state students.

Spillover from Harvard Coming to UC

The attempt by the feds to block international students from enrolling at Harvard - even though blocked by court action - will have spillover effects on UC and other universities. From Politico:

The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO.

In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. Embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

If the administration carries out the plan, it could severely slow down student visa processing. It also could hurt many universities who rely heavily on foreign students to boost their financial coffers...

Full story at https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/27/trump-team-orders-stop-to-new-student-visa-interviews-as-it-weighs-expanding-social-media-vetting-00370501.

Reparations/Admissions Bill

From AP: A California lawmaker introduced a bill Monday to allow admission priority to the descendants of slaves at the University of California and California State University, two of the largest public university systems in the nation. Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat who represents parts of Los Angeles and authored the legislation, said it would help rectify past and current discrimination at universities.

“For decades universities gave preferential admission treatment to donors, and their family members, while others tied to legacies of harm were ignored and at times outright excluded,” Bryan told The Associated Press. “We have a moral responsibility to do all we can to right those wrongs.” ...

In California, voters approved a ballot measure in 1996 that banned the state from giving preferential treatment based on race, sex, ethnicity, color or national origin in public employment, education or contracting. The proposition, which outlawed affirmative action in public university admissions in the state, was upheld by voters in 2020. Bryant’s legislation would permit, but not mandate, preferential admissions treatment for the descendants of slaves...

Bryan said he is hopeful for approval of the measure, which is in line with recommendations developed by members of California’s Black reparations task force...

Full story at https://apnews.com/article/california-universities-slavery-descendants-admissions-4b0e84c27b40725a9f7929b230a591ca.

Note: The text of the bill was not available on Bryan's state assembly website.

Money Shortage

We will be posting about this week's Regents meetings as time permits. The Good News is that we can now upload to the Internet Archive again after the cyber attack about which we have posted. So we can continue preserving recordings of Regents meetings. The Bad News is that the Internet Archive is not fully back to what it was. It sometimes becomes unavailable and - once something is successfully posted - no corrections (typos, etc.) can be entered thereafter. But we will persevere. And here is a preview of what the Regents were discussing from the LA Times:

The University of California wants to enroll nearly 3,600 more California students in the next academic year but is bracing for a looming budget crunch that could make it difficult to pay for increased enrollment. UC officials told regents Wednesday that the 10-campus university system could face a $504.7-million financial shortfall in 2025-26 if the state makes good on warnings earlier this year to reduce higher education funding as it grapples with a budget deficit. Lower state funding, along with higher costs primarily driven by faculty and staff pay increases, larger retirement plan contributions and more expensive healthcare, are projected to create that yawning UC budget hole.

“We’re facing a really tough budget year from the state,” Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom told regents, who are meeting in San Francisco this week...

[The question is] is whether UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego will still give an additional 902 California students highly coveted seats in place of out-of-state and international students if the state cuts back funding that offsets the loss of the higher tuition that nonresidents pay...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-14/uc-wants-to-enroll-3-600-more-california-students-next-year-but-may-hit-funding-shortfalls.

Transfers

UC has been under pressure from the legislature to admit more transfer students. The fact that community college enrollment dropped during the pandemic has made this goal more challenging. One result is a website created by UC to encourage and facilitate the process of transferring:

https://transfer.universityofcalifornia.edu/.

From EdSource: The University of California has launched a new website to offer one-stop academic planning and financial aid information for community college students who plan to transfer to a UC campus. The  UC Transfer Hub is part of an effort to increase the number of community college students who enroll at UC campuses, according to the university. The website also includes resources that explain the various pathways and programs available to transfer students.

“Transfer students come to the University of California from all types of backgrounds, bringing invaluable perspectives and a passion for learning that are part of what makes our university great,” said UC President Michael Drake. “This new online transfer hub includes resources and support programs for transfer applicants, making it easier for California Community College students to pursue a life-changing education at the University of California.” ...

Full story at https://edsource.org/updates/new-uc-website-part-of-effort-to-attract-transfer-students.

Goal vs. Actual

Note: The current average graduation time for 4-year students is 4.06 years.

The current average graduation time transfer students (2-year students) is 2.36 years.

Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/ug-outcomes.

Do the Regents Read the News?

Universities which dropped using the SAT and ACT as part of their admissions process have been reversing their decisions and going back to utilizing these tests. No major universities ever used the tests as the sole criterion for admission. UC, in particular, never used them in that way.

As blog readers will know, when UC was considering dropping the tests, the Academic Senate produced a report noting that in the way UC used the tests, they had the potential to increase enrollment diversity. Nonetheless, the Regents ignored the report - which they had requested - and dropped the tests.

Are the Regents now ignoring the news of other universities reversing course? Example:

Students applying for the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering will have to submit SAT or ACT scores beginning with those seeking admission for the fall 2026 semester, the university said on Friday. The policy change does not affect The Peabody Institute, which offers undergraduate degrees in music and fine arts. Students applying for fall 2025 admission are encouraged, but not required, to submit test scores.

Johns Hopkins was among many universities nationwide that stopped requiring standardized test scores during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hopkins announced a “test-optional” policy in June 2020. The policy was extended in February 2022, according to a university spokesperson. Test scores are an “imperfect” measure, according to a review published by Hopkins, but “stand out as a significant quantitative metric to assess the likelihood of students’ academic success” at the university.

“Test scores and GPA are just two components of the overall process, considered in context with multiple other factors, including an applicant’s circumstances and environment,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Some other institutions, like Yale University, have also recently announced they will once again require standardized test scores...

Full story at https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/higher-education/johns-hopkins-test-scores-LFWY5WNDDVHE3MJRI2ENG55ZFA/.

Reversing direction would suggest (Horrors! Horrors!) that a mistake was made. But apparently others are capable of doing it. Just saying...

The more, but not the merrier

An op ed recently appeared in the Sacramento Bee by Giuliana Perrone, associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara: [excerpts]

The University of California has just admitted what it says is its “largest and most diverse” class of students ever. This sounds positive — more Californians are gaining access to higher education, especially first generation and low-income students as well as individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. But as a UC faculty member, I reacted with despair. Where will these students live? Who will teach them? Who will advise them? How will they get the classes they need? Who will support their physical and mental health?

...I am the proud product of the UC system and I am extraordinarily grateful to be a faculty member at one. I earned my PhD at Berkeley, and am now a professor at UC Santa Barbara. I know first-hand how transformative the UC can be in people’s lives, and I strongly believe in its core principles, articulated in the state’s 1960 master plan, to pursue excellence in research and teaching while making higher education accessible to all. That ethos remains strong among faculty, but it is not enough to sustain the system.

Year after year, the UC enrolls more students than ever before. This is on top of the enrollment “surges” of prior years... At UC Berkeley, for example, the faculty to student ratio rose from 18-1 to 30-1 between 1990 and 2020, and many students are taking longer to earn their degrees because they can’t get into the classes they need. As someone who regularly teaches large classes — sometimes over 500 students with long waitlists — it is impossible for me to provide students with the focused attention so many need to reach their full academic potential, let alone do so while also fulfilling research and administrative requirements.

Our facilities also show signs of decades of deferred maintenance... Similarly, housing shortages have plagued the system, and viable solutions to the problem have been slow to materialize... It would be easy to blame campus spending for the UC’s budgetary crisis, such as the new labor contract with graduate student employees. But these are red herrings that detract from the structural problems we face. It would have been far cheaper, for instance, to invest in the construction of student housing than it is now to pay our students a salary that keeps up with cost of living increases. In other words, demands for higher pay are a symptom of a crumbling system — not its cause.

...The UC was once considered the best university system in the world, and our master plan became the gold standard for higher education. But we’re a shell of our former selves, and that’s exactly what awaits the record number of new admits that will join the UC in the fall.

Full op ed at https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article291019795.html.

Getting In

UCOP has released data on new admissions for fall 2024. Note that an applicant who is admitted may or may not accept and appear in the fall. That is, actual enrollment may differ from admissions.

...Overall, the University admitted a record 166,706 students (137,200 first-year and 29,506 transfer students). This included 93,920 first-year admission offers to California students, up 4.3 percent (3,867) from last year. This represents an all-time high for the number of California first-years admitted in a single year and is up more than 31,400 over 2014.

The admission rate for first-year California residents increased from 68 percent last year to 70 percent this year. UC is poised to enroll more California undergraduates than ever, building on systemwide progress toward the shared enrollment goals outlined in the budget compact with the state...

Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/university-california-breaks-admissions-records-surges-california-and-underrepresented.

Below are two of several tables that accompany the release above:

Who has STEM?

We will elsewhere cover the Regents meeting that dealt with high school math requirements for admission to UC. However, that meeting included the chart above that showed the percent of undergraduate majors in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines. Berkeley and Merced are the most STEM-intensive campuses. UCLA is among the campuses with the lowest percentage of STEM majors. The same pattern holds if you just look at undergrads who are Pell grant recipients, i.e., lower-income.

Not saying this is a Good Thing or Bad Thing. And note that there are non-STEM fields such as economics that are math-oriented. But the chart may show results that differ from expectations.

Moreover, the chart shows the importance of math preparation in high school. Many UC students are opting for STEM careers or non-STEM fields that require math. In order for them to have that option, high school math is important.

You can see the chart at https://archive.org/details/01-compliance-and-audit-7-17-2024/03-Academic+and+Student+Affairs+7-17-2024.mp4 around minute 54.

Legacy Admissions

There is a bill in the legislature, AB 1780, that seeks to ban legacy admissions (admissions of individuals related to donors or past enrollees) in private colleges and universities in California.

The bill has gone through various drafts and at first covered public institutions as well. As it went through various drafts, the public sector was dropped. UC, pursuant to Regents policy, officially does not have legacy admissions. Eventually, public universities were dropped from the bill, although a state auditor's report back in 2020 found such admissions had occurred at UC despite official policy.*

In its current version, now in the state senate, although the bill states that it is the intent of the legislature to ban legacy admissions, there isn't an explicit penalty for violation listed. Rather, institutions are required to report numerically any legacy admissions that occur. 

There is a hearing today at a senate committee on the bill.

The bill's text is at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1780.

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*https://laist.com/news/college-admissions-uc-donors-bias-audit.

A buried lede on community colleges and transfers?

EdSource carries an article on enrollment fraud at community colleges. Apparently, phony students apply, get financial aid, and then disappear. Bad actors now use bots to create phony students. Various efforts are being made to spot the fraud and block phony applications. However, there is a buried lede in the story that may create problems for UC:

“What we’re hearing is that (fraud) is happening more widespread than people are letting on, but people just have their heads in the sand because it looks good to have your enrollment going up,” said [Todd] Coston [an associate vice chancellor] with the Kern Community College District. 

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2024/04/financial-aid-fraud/.

This line is something of a buried lede. UC has various enrollment targets for transfers from community colleges. But these targets are in part based on assumptions about community college enrollment. If enrollment numbers are inflated by fraud, it will be that much harder for UC to meet those goals.