Lower UC out-of-state admission standards

Many Californian seniors are outraged and disappointed as they receive their rejections from various University of California campuses. These same students, who worked tirelessly to get into their dream schools, are even more furious after a recent audit of UC admissions showed that thousands of out-of-state students were admitted to UCs despite having the same or lower scores than California residents.

This rapid increase of out-of-state students is due to the fact that there has been a 30 percent cut in UC state funding, leading to a need for an increased amount of money from the students. Rather than raise the in-state tuition, UCs seem to have accepted more out-of-state students due to the fact that they pay $25,000 more a year on average. In order to do this, UCs have relaxed their admission requirements for out-of-state students. This has lead to quite a controversy.

We at The Olympian believe that educational opportunities should be about the students’ effort and intellect rather than the amount of money that they can supply to the school. We also feel that UCs were created for students of California and therefore Californians should be the ones to have the advantage over out-of-state students, not vice versa. We understand that UCs are going to need more money and that in our capitalist society, it has to come out of the pockets of the consumers (the students).

We at The Olympian feel that UCs need to redirect the way that they are handling the cut in funding. We feel that they should slightly increase in-state tuition, as well as heartily increase out-of-state tuition in order to reduce the amount of out-of-state students in California schools and still meet the financial requirements to keep the schools running. We feel that many Californians would be fine with a slight increase in tuition in order to have a fair shot at schools that were created for them and that non-residents would be willing to pay a higher tuition in order to attend a prestigious UC. We also suggest that UCs limit the amount of out-of-state students to 15 percent to better insure that this problem is fixed and doesn’t reoccur.

Overall at The Olympian we want to see the UCs make major changes concerning this subject by next year’s round of admissions.