Esco, your chart from whatever document you say it came from says that 23% (or 6108 of UCSD’s 26,590 enrolled undergrads) in (Fall) 2015 were from OOS and OOC. 17% (or 4407 students) were from San Diego County. 36% (or 9478 students) were from LA, Orange, Ventura and IE Counties. 16% (or 4343 students) were from SF Bay area counties. 8% (or 2254 students) in (Fall) 2015 were from CA (other) including Sac area and rural/agricultural CA (totaling 100%).
There is something wrong with that picture.
SF Bay area residents have SFSU, SJSU, UCB (Cal flagship), CSUEB (with a HUGE Concord extension)! That’s 4+ public campuses serving their home county undergrads PLUS proximity of commuting to UCD and CSU Sonoma to some Solano and Contra Costa County residents. Yet, 4407 of the residents of these counties were attending UCSD in Fall 2015.
LA/OC and IE residents have 9 public universities to choose from: CSULB (flagship), CSUF, CSUDH, CPP, CSUSB, CSUN and UCI, UCLA (flagship) and UCR. Yet, 9,478 of the residents of these counties were attending UCSD in Fall 2015.
Sac Delta and rural CA residents attending UCSD (2254 of them in Fall 2015) have campuses closer to their home base than UCSD, yet they are enrolled at UCSD. I DO understand that the public campus(es) closer to their homes may not have the degree programs they are seeking. I know how the CSU and UC application processes work and that the applicants must list a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and even 4th thru 6th choice to increase their odds of being admitted. But it shouldn’t have to be this way for qualified CA-resident applicants! Although my own kids were able to attend CA public universities out of county (only because they couldn’t get admitted to SDSU and weren’t qualified to apply to UC) and we were able to pay for their housing, the vast majority of families can’t afford housing! It’s really tough for these kids and I hear a lot of sob stories, including kids with Associate Degrees, one who graduated on the Dean’s list at SWC (a CC) who can’t seem to get admitted as a junior at SDSU and UCSD … the reason being that they are giving too many slots away to out of county, out of state and out of country applicants (both freshman and junior slots)! It’s morally reprehensible. Qualified applicants who are American citizens or who have legal citizenship and completed their K-12 education in CA public schools deserve to be given a fair shake in the application process of their home county public university BEFORE accepting a slot at a distant campus from their home. If they turn it down in favor of accepting an offer of admission from a distant campus, fine. But it should be OFFERED to them.
I can think of 6-8 other states off-hand where this would never happen. No way, no how … hell, no! Their OWN QUALIFIED IN-STATE HS GRADUATES come FIRST in the freshman selection process at their public universities. PERIOD. ESPecially the rural HS graduates who may have even been bussed to ONE K-12 public school all of their lives … with no access to AP offerings! It’s only fair and that’s the way it should be.
The Regents and the CSU Board are corrupt. The CA Education Code sections addressing the “selection process” of students at UC/CSU needs to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb by an enterprising legislator, gutted and replaced with very specific language on how the selection process should go, step by step and placed before the Legislature ASAP. The “vague” sections giving the Regents and the Board way too much leeway in admissions need to be shored up pronto. We have sold most of our Native Cali young people (fresh out of HS) down the river in the past ten years and the results are not pretty.
In the absence of law stating otherwise, the Regents and the Board will continue to do whatever they please. And our kids will continue to flail around working for $2 over minimum wage at Pep Boys at age 30 while living with mom and/or dad with their (now 10-year old) worthless Associate Degree they earned at CC when they were “following all the rules laid out for them to get admitted to University.”
