The latest news involving the University of California—“Berkeley Sees Admission of Latino Students Drop and Nonresidents Jump”—pits two groups, Hispanic students and non-Californians. But of course what’s really going on is a struggle over money, economic class, and the question of how dedicated public universities will be to their special mission of promoting social mobility.
U.C. Berkeley is cash starved, and one way to raise money is to bring in more wealthy out-of-state students, who pay $22,000 more in fees than resident students. Berkeley didn’t make its change slowly—it more than doubled the proportion of out-of-state students in the freshman class in a single year, from 11% to 23%. And it did so with the full awareness that minority students would suffer. The drop in Latino admissions was 12%. (The data published by the U.C. system addressed changes in racial and ethnic breakdown but not income.)
Berkeley has a couple of arguments in its defense. Among top colleges, it has long shouldered more than its fair share on the economic diversity front. In 2007, according to an Education Trust report, 33.0 % of Berkeley students received Pell Grants. By comparison, other leading public universities had Pell grant rates that were substantially lower, including the University of Virginia (9.5%), the University of Michigan Ann Arbor (13.4%), and the University of North Carolina, Chapel-Hill (15.3%). Furthermore, Berkeley admits fewer out-of-state students than other leading institutions. Michigan and Virginia, for example routinely admit more than 30% of students from out of state.
Some have noted that the big increase in non-Californian freshman may backfire politically, fueling parochial anger from state taxpayers and further reducing the public support for the U.C. system. But this debate goes beyond politics to fundamental questions about the special role of public universities in American society. As scholar Gary Berg notes in new book, Low-Income Students and the Perpetuation of Inequality: Higher Education in America, today most private universities “serve a higher percentage of students from low-income families” than do public universities, undermining the “special responsibility” of public institutions of higher education to promote access.
Some will argue that in tough economic times, public universities have no choice but to make financial decisions that hurt low-income students. This sounds plausible, but what, then, is the excuse for the major decline of academically qualified low-income high school graduates at public and private four-year institutions in more financially flush years? According to a recent report of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 54% of such students enrolled in four-year colleges in 1992, but by 2004, only 40% did.
U.C. Berkeley has been long been the poster child for promoting both academic excellence and economic diversity—a worthy outlier, defending the particular mission of public universities. Its special status makes the recent retreat especially poignant.
4 Responses to U.C. Berkeley and the Access Mission of Public Universities
arrive2__net - July 16, 2010 at 2:10 am
If the state has specific expectations on the percent of in-state students a public university should admit, it should probably try to specify that percent through the legislature. By doing so the legislature would open up a public debate about the implications of generating revenue by admitting out-of-state students. In admitting out-of-state students in order to get their higher tuition, the state university is enhancing revenue, in effect, financing its in-state operations based on revenue derived from a profitable out-of-state clientele. If UC could be operated (at no or low cost to the taxpayer) by selling half the seats to these high paying out-of-state students, would California go for it? Bernard SchusterArrive2.net
22286593 - July 16, 2010 at 1:23 pm
The reduction in in-state Latino students at Berkeley is tragic and short-sighted for the campus. Whatever the dynamics at Berkeley, the discussion is always complicated by the fact that it is part of the UC system. This year, for the entire UC system, the number of Latinos and African American students increased. The low numbers of Latinos and African Americans at Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD is alarming, yet the growth of their numbers at other campuses is a real sign of progress. In all of this, I think most observers will agree that at the undergraduate level, the quality of education and the educational outcomes are NOT significantly different from one UC campus to another–indeed good argument can be made that undergraduate students receive better education (and certainly more faculty attention) at UC Santa Barbara than UCLA. Perhaps one way to solve this problem is to implement a policy where UC Berkeley and UCLA do not receive all of the financial benefit of their growing out of state and international students but to spread out the windfall to other campuses. This would contribute to maintaining the overall academic quality of the UC system and dampen the process of best resourced campuses getting richer while less resourced campuses get poorer while they need to serve more diverse set of students.
research_guy - July 16, 2010 at 1:40 pm
As a Berkeley grad and donor-no-more, I am very sad at the situation in Berkeley, and it’s not just the Latino phenomenon (though that is bad enough: crushing the American dream for many at the lowest rung while continuing to tax them for it). I was privileged to get an outstanding education at an outstanding university at Berkeley 30 years ago, but what I see now is: (1) an out-of-touch leadership; (2) poor coordination of all CA campuses wihin any statewide higher education strategy to create pathways, eliminate duplication, and make better use of existing funds; (3) sloppy amateur fundraising and an ignoring of “little” donors in pursuit of mega-gifts; (4) an expensive system office duplicating some functions of campuses; (5) loss of taxpayer faith and support. Californians used to be proud to have and support one of the world’s finest public universities, the poster child for the “new American public university”. Time for a complete re-think of mission, structure, purpose, and operations. Until then, my money’s going to another alma mater.
gpage - July 17, 2010 at 2:20 pm
RE: arrive2__net (#1)VA sets the limit that way currently (max of 35% out of state if I remember correctly).In general:When principles meet pocketbooks, we see how strong the principles and resolve are. Many American’s abhor taxes for purposes that they do not immediately benefit from, so I’m not surprised that there has been a shifting of funding from the general public to the attending student (which, I think, has a greater potential of restricting access by SES). If public/state higher education would like a bigger appropriation, I think they will have to work toward an arguably massive and serious campaign to change public perception as to why it is important that Joe Public foot the bill via taxes. I don’t see that campaign occuring currently. Electricity travels via the path of least resistance, and I think funding will as well.(twitter: @g_page)