UC San Diego prepares to admit more California residents

UC San Diego is preparing to admit fewer out-of-state and international students and more California residents in the coming years to comply with orders from state lawmakers, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The budget adopted last week by the Legislature says lawmakers plan to force UC San Diego, along with UCLA and UC Berkeley, to reduce their out-of-state enrollment to 18% over the next several years and replace those students with California residents.

Lawmakers have argued that those campuses give too many seats to out-of-state and international students, and that those spots should go to California residents. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, told the Union-Tribune that UC, and especially the San Diego, Los Angeles and Berkeley campuses, has “focused on admitting out-of-state students at the expense of in-state students.”

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla told the Union-Tribune that, while out-of-state enrollment has increased at UC San Diego over the years, no out-of-state student has ever “displaced a Californian.”

But Khosla added that he’s confident that UC San Diego will be able to find enough qualified California residents to replace the out-of-state students.

“Will we find enough Californians to replace the non-residents? The short answer is yes,” Khosla told the Union-Tribune. “We will certainly find enough Californians. I am not losing sleep over that.”

Lawmakers also say they have agreed to expand undergraduate enrollment of California residents by 6,230 at the University of California during the 2022-23 academic year. Funding for that enrollment growth was not part of the 2021-22 budget but lawmakers say it will be included in the 2022-23 budget.

While that new enrollment would be spread across the UC’s nine campuses, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a disproportionate number of those students would likely go to UC San Diego because that campus has more room to grow.