In early June, 19-year-old Brian Cruz was on a break from his warehouse job at Amazon, listening to music. He scrolled through the messages on his phone and saw an email from the college and career center at his old high school in Hemet, a high desert town in Southern California. 

Even though Cruz graduated from Tahquitz High School last year, the email invited him to make an appointment with a school counselor. Last spring, Cruz decided to put off college and work while he waited out the pandemic. 
But a year of packing boxes at Amazon and a lifetime of seeing family members work manual labor made him anxious to go back to school as soon as possible. “I was happy to get that email, because I really didn’t know what to do,” he said. 

Cruz is one of the first students to participate in College Comeback, a counseling program launched by the Riverside County Office of Education at the end of May. A team of six spends 25 hours a week reaching out to the high school class of 2020 after data revealed that 2,300 fewer students ⁠— a decline of around 8% ⁠— went to college in fall 2020 compared to the year before. 

The numbers from Riverside County mirror trends in other parts of the state and the country. Nationally, college going rates for students straight out of high school were down 13% overall and 22% at community colleges in fall 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a non-profit that tracks enrollment data. Experts attribute the enrollment decline to the COVID-19 pandemic and aren’t sure how soon — or whether — those numbers will bounce back.

“That’s one in five freshmen who would have been expected to go to a community college this fall that simply didn’t show up,” said Doug Shapiro, executive research director at the Clearinghouse, during a presentation for the Education Writers Association in May. 

Coming back
A few days after getting the email from the school counselor, Cruz logged onto a Zoom appointment with counselor Yuri Nava. He told her he’d been accepted to University of California Riverside last year, but didn’t enroll after he found out classes would be online. 

Nava informed him he’d missed the Nov. 30 deadline for the upcoming school year, so he’d have to wait until fall 2022 to start at UC Riverside. No one had told Cruz that he had the option to defer his admission a year, he said. 
Nava then walked Cruz through his options, encouraging him to think about community college.

College going rates
​Five of California's most populous public school districts provided data for college-going seniors for 2019 vs. 2020.​

​Long told Insider that Pegasus paid Aldrich as a consultant. "Especially with international students and parents, it's helpful to have someone that has had or is connected with, previously or currently [with the University of California]. We try to stay away from the current, but he's a consultant so it's not that big of a [deal]," Long added.

​Aldrich confirmed to Insider that he was paid to consult for both UC Irvine and Pegasus, and that the high school also paid for him to travel to China. He said he never did anything improper in his work for Pegasus, which "produced quality students, and we look for quality students in the University of California."
UC Irvine told Insider in a statement that Aldrich contacted the university to see if Pegasus students' applications were missing transcripts or other necessary documents, and never discussed admissions.
"I'm not an expert in education"

As the University of California confronts record demand for admission, lawmakers are considering a plan to cut in half the share of nonresident students to make more room for locals. As the University of California faces huge demand for seats — and public outcry over massive rejections by top campuses in a record application year — state lawmakers are considering a plan to slash the share of out-of-state and international students to make room for more local residents.

The state Senate has unveiled a proposal to reduce the proportion of nonresident incoming freshmen to 10% from the current systemwide average of 19% over the next decade beginning in 2022 and compensate UC for the lost income from higher out-of-state tuition.

This would ultimately allow nearly 4,600 more California students to secure freshmen seats each year, with the biggest gains expected at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. The share of nonresidents at those campuses surpasses the systemwide average, amounting to a quarter of incoming freshmen. UC, however is pushing back, saying the plan would limit its financial flexibility to raise needed revenue and weaken the benefits of a geographically broad student body.

“It’s not about ending out-of-state students — they really add to the mix and the educational experience,” said Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), whose Senate budget subcommittee on education discussed the plan this month. “We just have to make sure there’s enough spaces for in-state students.”

The question of who should get a coveted seat in the nation’s premier public research university system has raged for years, as legislators are perennially pummeled by constituent complaints about UC access. The issue has ignited political fireworks, a scathing state audit, UC admission reforms and extensive policy work into how to accommodate the growing number of qualified California applicants amid limited funding and space.
Although the UC system is constitutionally autonomous and controls its own enrollment decisions, state lawmakers have used their power over purse strings to compel UC to adopt their directives.

Under political pressure, the UC regents in 2017 capped nonresident enrollment at 18% systemwide, with a higher share grandfathered in for UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego and Irvine.
But some legislators are saying that cap is still too high — and that this is an opportune year to begin driving it down because Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed using some of the state’s record $75 billion surplus to give UC $805 million, which university leaders have applauded as the largest investment in the university system’s 153-year history.

But Newsom has not tied that funding to increases in California student enrollment, as previous state budgets have done, and UC’s 2021-22 budget plan doesn’t include higher targets. The Senate 10% plan is the first volley in what is bound to be protracted negotiations over the issue before the June 15 deadline for legislative passage of the budget.

“We’re giving them a blank check and they’re giving us nothing in return for our priorities,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), whose budget subcommittee also has long pushed for more California students. “When we go to our districts and talk to our constituents, access to the University of California is a front and center issue that we hear about.”

UC officials say they share the goal of enrolling and graduating more California students and have added 19,000 more of them since 2015. But they oppose the 10% plan, saying nonresidents enrich the college environment for all students and pay more than $1 billion annually in supplemental tuition that helps fill budget holes. That revenue, officials say, has allowed UC to enroll more Californians not fully covered by state funding, as well as provide more faculty, staff, student services, financial aid and campus facility upgrades.

“We understand and support the Legislature’s goal of providing more opportunities for Californians at UC, though we believe trying to achieve this through reducing nonresident students will potentially lead to unanticipated outcomes,” the university said in a statement. UC called for a “stable and predictable revenue source” to increase California undergraduate enrollment without hurting low-income students or limiting efforts to recruit students outside the state.

For thousands of California families, however, the increasing difficulty of accessing a UC seat at many campuses after they’ve supported the university system with their taxes for years has fueled heartbreak, frustration and anger. And high school teachers and counselors want to see more of their hard-working students reap the rewards of a UC acceptance letter.

“We have the great privilege of having these extremely prestigious public universities in the state but the downside is they’re really popular and everyone is trying to get in,” said Heather Brown, college counselor at Los Angeles High. “It’s only fair that students of residents who have been putting tax dollars into the pot should benefit.”
Weni Wilson, a San Marino parent, said the high-performing children of several of her friends did not get admitted to their top UC choices this year and the topic is so painful they’ve had to agree not to talk about college admissions in order to continue their social gatherings.

Wilson said her own daughter will attend UC Irvine this fall, but she supports the Senate plan as a way to open more access to other California students — including her two younger children who will be applying to college in five years.

“As a California taxpayer, I would expect and hope that the children of California residents have the opportunity to attend UC schools because right now the opportunity is taken away for a lot of these kids,” Wilson said.

The controversy began in the wake of the 2008 recession, when UC sought to offset major state budget cuts by aggressively recruiting and admitting more nonresident students, who each pay an additional $29,000 in tuition a year. As a result, the share of nonresident undergraduates systemwide tripled from 5% in 2007 to 15% in 2015.
In 2016, a state audit found that campuses harmed local students by admitting too many nonresidents. In a fiery response, then-President Janet Napolitano called the findings “unfair and unwarranted.” But UC regents, following an audit recommendation, approved the 18% cap.

State lawmakers, however, pressed for more changes — directing UC to develop a plan beginning in fall 2020 to gradually reduce nonresident students to 10%, but it was not implemented. Now, in a record-shattering year of more than 200,000 applicants vying for 46,000 freshman seats, the state Senate has made the enrollment issue one of its top educational priorities, Laird said.

Under the 10% plan, the share of nonresident students would be cut at UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, Davis, Irvine and Santa Barbara but allowed to rise to that level at Santa Cruz, Riverside and Merced. The plan would replace the lost tuition from nonresidents and cover the cost of additional California students to take their spots, beginning with $56 million next year and growing to $775 million by 2033.

​Seija Virtanen, UC associate director of state budget relations, told Laird’s subcommittee that it would be more cost-effective to fund more California undergraduates, whom the state funds at roughly $10,000 each, than cut the number of nonresidents and backfill their lost tuition at more than twice that amount. She also said the Senate plan could create a “financial vulnerability” for UC — if state funding were cut again, for instance, in another recession.
UC student leaders also have spoken out against the 10% plan. Aidan Arasasingham, president of the UC Student Assn., said students from other states and countries bring a vibrant diversity to campus and their talent and skills to California since most stay here and work after graduation.

“You can’t have a globally minded education without learning from peers from across the state, the country and world,” Arasasingham said. “Instead of building walls to keep certain students out, we need to build stronger bridges of opportunity for California residents to allow them to come here through increased access, more retention or the funding of new seats at UC.”

Even some supporters of the plan have some qualms.

“If the state isn’t able to fully compensate UC for the lost income from out-of-state tuition, are they going to have a higher ratio of students to professors? Are they going to have crumbling infrastructure?” Wilson asked. “Is it worth it to allow more kids in but then have a poor quality education?”

Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who chairs the Assembly budget committee, said nonresidents made up only 5% of Berkeley students when he attended that campus three decades ago and returning to lower levels was “long overdue” — especially at the most highly sought after campuses. UCLA and Berkeley, he said, can’t significantly add more Californians without reducing nonresidents because they are at capacity with little physical room to grow.
At a February subcommittee hearing, Ting pressed UC President Michael V. Drake on whether UC should lower the 18% cap.

“It’s a complicated question,” Drake replied, adding he would be happy to work with legislators to find the right balance.

The Assembly also has supported the 10% plan and plans to flesh out details of its own UC proposal in the next several days.

“We have so many residents who are dying to go to UC and we want to give as many UC eligible students the opportunity to come to the University of California as possible,” Ting said.

Source: The San Diego Union Tribune
​

The regents of the University of California spoke as one when they unanimously scrapped the Scholastic Aptitude Test in a virtual meeting last month. “I believe the test is a racist test,” said one regent, Jonathan Sures. “There’s no two ways about it.”
But the regents’ decision flouted a unanimous faculty-senate vote a few weeks earlier to retain the SAT for now, after a yearlong study by a task force found the test neither “racist” nor discriminatory and not an obstacle to minorities in any way.
The 228-page report, loaded with hundreds of displays of data from the UC’s various admissions departments, found that the SAT and a commonly used alternative test, ACT (also eliminated), helped increase black, Hispanic and Native-American enrollment at the system’s 10 campuses.
“To sum up,” the task force report determined, “the SAT allows many disadvantaged students to gain guaranteed admission to UC.”
So how could the liberal governing board of a major university system reject the imprimatur of its own liberal faculty researchers and kill a diversity accelerator in the name of the very diversity desired?
The answer: The urgency of political momentum against the tests proved irresistible and swept away the research and data.
Standardized tests were created about 100 years ago by what became the College Board to provide qualified Jews, Italians, Irish and others a better chance of getting into elite institutions dominated at the time by privileged, well-connected, mostly Protestant families. The idea was that the test created a national standard by which all students from all parts of the country and backgrounds could be compared.
But over the years some minority groups have scored significantly lower on the test than others. This has led many educators, civil rights activists and some academics to argue that the tests are racially biased obstacles to the goals of opportunity and diversity.
They say the tests favor affluent families, most of them white, who are able to pay for things like private tutoring and summer enrichment programs of the sort that are out of reach for poorer families. This was the prevailing view among the UC regents.
The debate, far from new, is complicated and something of a scholarly maze with numerous research studies seeming to support one or another side of the question. But there was little ambiguity in the findings of the rebuffed UC faculty task force — scholars from different fields who in almost any context would be considered solidly liberal and who studied the SAT specifically as it is used in the University of California system.