Getting into one of California’s most prestigious universities may be trickier after the state’s highest court on Thursday refused to overturn a lower court ruling limiting admissions to UC Berkeley at the 2020-2021 level.
The California Supreme Court’s decision upheld a decision made last August that ordered the university to freeze student enrollment at 42,347.
The decision was the result of a legal battle with a group of residents, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, who accused the university of failing to provide enough on-campus housing while also accepting a large number of students, many of them from out of state. or country.
University officials said Thursday that as a result of a new analysis that concluded they need to include hundreds of students who will study abroad or in Washington in their tally, the university will have to cut its in-person enrollment by at least 2,500 students in the fall of 2022.
University officials previously said that UC Berkeley, already one of the nation’s most selective institutions, will have 3,050 fewer places for incoming freshmen and transfer students than planned for fall 2022.
Typically, UC Berkeley said it offers admission to approximately 21,000 freshmen and transfer students, with about 9,500 of them enrolling. University officials emphasized that this decision does not mean that letters of acceptance should be cancelled.
To soften the blow from the enrollment freeze, at least 1,500 students will be offered one of two options, they said. One group will be invited to study as online students in the fall and then allowed to attend in person in January 2023. The second group will be offered deferred enrollment to begin face-to-face training in January 2023.
Overall, officials say they will be able to reduce the number of students who will not be allowed to enroll at all to about 400. But the university still called these options “far from ideal” because they would turn away deserving students.” a full, rich personal experience starting in the fall when all their classmates enroll.”
“We still know this will be a very disappointing outcome for these thousands of students, but we are doing our best under the terms of the unprecedented court ruling,” University spokesman Dan Moguloff said Thursday.
University officials said they are also seeking state legislative decisions “that could remove the significant impact of a lower court ruling on admissions decisions at UC Berkeley and other campuses.”
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods said Thursday that while the state Supreme Court is pleased that it has upheld the enrollment moratorium, “we would like to assure deserving California high school students that we are as disappointed as they are that that the University of California was trying to use them as pawns in the University of California’s efforts to avoid mitigating the effects of the massive increase in enrollment over the past few years.”
“We have offered many times to settle our case in exchange for UC Berkeley agreeing to a legally binding obligation to increase housing before they increase enrollment,” the group said in a statement. “Every time we got rejected.”
Phil Sideways, the group’s president, said UC Berkeley has admitted 14,000 students since 2005, but has only provided 1,600 beds. This, he says, has prompted students to seek housing in Berkeley neighborhoods, where they have moved into apartments that were once rent-controlled, crowding out low- and middle-income residents.
He said that the housing shortage had led to “a huge number of homeless people in Berkeley”. A group of residents said they were trying to avoid a housing crisis like the one at UC Santa Barbara, where students had to sleep in cars or hotels.
Last August, Judge Brad Seligman of the Alameda County Superior Court agreed with the group that the university “continued to increase and rapidly exceeded” its enrollment projections.
He also said the university could not promote the Upper Hearst Project, a plan for new housing and academic facilities for faculty, doctoral researchers and graduate students.
In 2019, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods sued the university to stop the project because the university did not provide enough information or assurances about how the project would mitigate the housing crisis or affect traffic, noise, and other environmental issues.
In a statement Thursday, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods said it agreed with the disagreement of Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu of the California Supreme Court, who suggested that the parties could enter into negotiations or mediation to resolve their dispute.
“Indeed, given the stakes on all sides, it’s hard to imagine a case where a negotiated settlement seems more important for the good of the local community and our state,” Judge Liu wrote. He added: “It’s not too late to find a solution that will mitigate the environmental problems of the local community without leaving our 3,050 young people behind.”
University officials said they could not go along with Mr. Bokovoi’s demand for an enrollment limit, in part because enrollment is determined not by UC Berkeley, but by the UC Board of Regents and the Legislature, which have urged the public at state universities to admit more students. from California.
Mr Moguloff previously said the university’s efforts to build more housing have also been thwarted by lawsuits from community groups, which he called “ironic.”
Maria Kramer contributed reporting.