UC must cap enrollment to combat cuts

The state of California is faced with a daunting $35 billion
deficit in the upcoming fiscal year, and the University of
California will have to bear some of the burden. Cuts to the
UC’s 2003-2004 budget along with midyear reductions total
over $373 million. If the budget is approved this summer, students
will need to pay $1,200 more in fees next year.

The proposed cuts will undoubtedly decrease the quality of an
already problematic UC education. UCLA and UC Berkeley may be able
to find ways to house more bodies and seat more people in
theater-sized lecture halls if enrollment growth requires them to,
but it in no way guarantees an optimal learning environment. At
UCLA, students need to “think big” about their
education. Lectures, particularly for general education courses,
are enormous, sometimes numbering over 350 people. Upper-division
classes with more than 100 people have their seats almost
completely filled by scrambling swarms of students during the first
pass of the enrollment period. And many of these classes are taught
by lecturers who are underpaid or under-appreciated for their work.
They are hired not because they’re better than professors,
but because they’re more affordable and easily replaced. The
combination of these and similar factors takes a toll on the
attention the university is able to give each student.

The state grants the UC a certain level of enrollment growth
funding according to how many students are enrolled, and while it
has included this funding in the budget, it is to little relative
effect. When enrollment growth funding is coupled with major cuts
to academic programs and departments, students and faculty will
still be losing out. For example, the UC’s brightest faculty
have no incentive to stay if they are offered more money elsewhere,
since no money is allocated for pay raises ““ instead, about
$35 million is expected to be cut from instruction. Departments
cannot grow, either, they must instead look for ways to cut down.
This makes the UC less attractive to top scholars that attract the
best students.

The UC’s financial quagmire calls for an unpleasant
solution: growth needs to be halted via enrollment caps now. State
politicians have no qualms gutting the UC of funding, so long as
the university quietly absorbs budget cuts every time they are
administered. Legislators need to have a political incentive to
prioritize the UC and make cuts to it an absolute last resort. No
politician wants to campaign in a state like California, where
education is a top issue, in the wake of UC enrollment caps
resulting from hundreds of millions of dollars being written out of
its budget.

If the UC decides to implement enrollment caps, it must do so
while safeguarding advances it has made in ensuring a diverse
number of students are eligible for admission. This means the 12.5
percent plan, admitting the top 12.5 percent of all California high
school students into a UC school, and the 4 percent plan, admitting
the top 4 percent of students from each California high school into
a UC school, should not be completely eliminated. Instead, the UC
should consider reducing these percentages slightly to coincide
with desired enrollment caps. The UC could thus maintain its
commitment to admitting students from all areas of California but
still reduce the actual numbers entering.

Enrollment caps run counter to the ideal that everyone who wants
higher education should receive it. But unless the state is willing
to cut non-educational programs or raise taxes, the UC simply
can’t afford it.