7,600 high school seniors who had an average GPA of 3.46 and were admitted to the University of California at Berkeley are being re-directed to JC's due to Gov. Schwarzenegger's directive that the UC System sharply reduce enrollment this Fall in order to meet a budget cut of $372 million to the University of California system. These cuts represent the fourth consecutive year of such cuts to the UC system. Measured another way, the governor's budget, when combined with prior cuts, would leave the university with $530 million less in net state funding than it had in the 2000-01 fiscal year -- a decline in state support of more than 16 percent during a period when enrollments have grown by more than 15 percent. Already, every area of university spending has been cut, student fees have increased significantly, employee positions have been eliminated, and faculty and staff have been denied cost-of-living salary increases. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/21/MNGRO681SD53.DTL
More proof Gray Davis's past "spend now and worry later" has created carry forward carnage. I always heard going to a university was a privilege, not a birthright. Nothing could be more true for the Fall 2004 incoming class. Schwarzenegger's "cut up the credit cards" state budgeting is strong medicine indeed...but a necessary step.
Just how big is the entering class at UC Berkeley if 7600 who had been admitted were redirected to JC's? There comes a time when you have to recognize that resources are not endless. Perhaps the management of the UC system could show some real leadership and cut nonessential administrative positions rather than hurt students? Naah, that wouldn't get the headlines. They call it the "Washington Monument" gambit. Everytime congress wants to cut the budget , the government responds by announcing draconian cuts in the few visible services the taxpayers receive from government, eg visiting the Washington Monument. Education bureaucrats are particularly adept at this, since their budgets are so bloated and inefficient. Everytime some local county or town wants to hold down education spending, what happens? The administrators announce they will have to cut all sports teams, etc.
With California resident tuition subsidies (paid out of state taxes) now hitting over $14,000 per year per student at Berkeley ($5,858 for residents vs. $20,068 for out of state) - they have to either cut costs and reduce the # of subsidies or drastically reduce the size of the subsidy for resident students (i.e., perhaps jack up every resident student's tuition to $13,000). In the absence of doing that, they have to set the entrance barrier higher to reduce the # of subsidies (since only 14% of students are from out of state and paying the full cost of attending) - and a GPA of 3.46 isn't really that high of a barrier (e.g., the average high school GPA at Stanford is 3.9 and UCB's overall average high school GPA is 3.76).
This may seem "novel" to you, but parents and students borrow money to pay for college all the time in this country. It's not like a college education in the UC system is free. These students were not allowed admission into the UC system because they did not have the money. They were denied because Schwarzenegger told the UC Regents that they had to cut admissions by 10%. The tuition for an in-state student is now up to $5,858.00 With Housing, Food, Utilities, Books, and personal expenses you get up to $20,000 per year in a real hurry. Can you imagine working your ass off, competing with everyone else to get into a famed academic institution where SAT scores average 1320, only to find out that they have closed their admissions office to you? What does this say about our countries economic future? And you wonder why Japan, China, and India are kicking are freaking ass in engineering? Get real.
I am not sure how long you have lived in California, but being eligible for a UC system education has pretty much been a birthrite ( and not a "privilege" as you say ) for the past 44 years, since the inception and promise of the 1960 California Master Plan which guarantees admission to all students who meet eligibility requirements. And you wonder why we are becoming a nation of "hamburger flippers" . . .
Not that your point was comparing actual GPA's, but you can't really compare the GPA's of incoming freshmen students of CAL and Stanford because Stanford's admission criteria are from another "universe". Besides, the admissions to UC system schools like Berkeley have always allowed for the SAT to be a "non-exclusive" factor if a student's GPA was above a certain level. In otherwords, a "sliding" scale is used between GPA and SAT scores. Last time I checked, the SAT of incoming freshmen at CAL was 1330.6
I meant to say that the 7,600 students were denied admission to the UC system, and not just CAL. As for actual numbers, it's really a shame that these kids have to suffer from Schwarzenegger's budget cuts. The fact of the matter is that this year's total number of applicants was roughly the same as last year's ( 64,146 vs 66,410 of last year ). It's not like there was a huge surge all of a sudden in applicants. Furthermore, the UC system has seen 4 consecutive years of budget cuts . . . and people wonder why the United States is falling behind Taiwan, China, India, and Japan when it comes to graduating engineering students and creating "leading-edge" technologies. Fce it, we are becoming a nation of "hamburger-flippers"