The University of California at Berkeley tripled the number of international students it admitted in this year’s freshman class and plans to enroll even more students from outside the state next year, in part to pump up tuition revenue during a difficult financial period for the state’s universities.
Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, said in an interview last week that his campus was increasing the number of international students primarily for educational reasons, saying he felt that undergraduates had “inadequate exposure” to the views of students from other countries.
But with the state facing a budget deficit estimated at $11-billion and appropriations for universities shrinking, officials also acknowledged a financial motive. They stressed, however, that Berkeley was increasing enrollment over all so that accepting more out-of-state students would not hurt access for Californians.
Several other University of California campuses are also considering accepting more nonresident students. The discussions intensified after the system’s Office of the President warned last year that it would impose a budget cut on any campus that did not meet longstanding revenue targets for nonresident tuition, university officials said.
At Berkeley, about 12 percent of the 2008 freshman class came from outside California, and officials expect to enroll about 13 percent of the next freshman class from outside the state. Those numbers include both international and out-of-state students. By comparison, about 8 percent of the undergraduate population as a whole comes from out of state.
Places Preserved for State Residents
The university increased the proportion of nonresident students by adding about 200 new spots in the freshman class just for those students, while keeping the number of California residents the same.
Berkeley officials said the university would continue to reject the models of public universities in some states, like Michigan and Virginia, that have aggressively courted students from elsewhere in the country. At the University of Michigan, about a third of freshmen enrolled each year are from outside the state.
“We know, being a public institution, that we have a commitment to the state. We don’t want to become the University of Michigan,” said Dennis Hengstler, Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor for planning and analysis. “At the same time, this is a pretty significant source of revenue for the campus as a way of mitigating some of the budget cuts.”
In continuing to enroll the same number of in-state students, administrators seemed to anticipate criticism that they might be cutting access to California students. But the policy may still provoke some state legislators and others who have resisted efforts to increase the number of out-of-state students at the University of California.
“That’s going to piss the Legislature off,” said Bob Laird, who was Berkeley’s director of admissions from 1993 to 1997. Mr. Laird said he had never before heard an argument at Berkeley in favor of increasing nonresident enrollment for revenue purposes.
“It seems to me it would be wiser to do it more gradually,” Mr. Laird said, “so you don’t have that sense that, ‘Gosh, we’ve increased space at Berkeley, and not a single California resident has benefited from it.’”
Financial Nudge
The state’s financial situation helped drive a directive last year from the university’s Office of the President regarding nonresident tuition goals. Campuses that fell short of existing targets, it warned, would receive a corresponding budget reduction.
“For some of them, that was kind of a wake-up call,” said Nina Robinson, the system’s director of policy and external affairs. “They realized that over time the revenue in this area has declined.”
One state official said the systemwide effort to enroll more nonresident students was misguided. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a member of the university’s Board of Regents and a Democrat, said on Tuesday that he thought the policy was “a mistake” that would “inevitably deny in-state students a chance to attend the university.”
Some campuses appear to be resisting any push to enroll more nonresident students.
Thomas E. Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of California at Los Angeles, said it was “very unlikely” that the university would change the proportion of out-of-state students in its freshman class.
“As a state public institution, UCLA must give priority in terms of access to California residents to the greatest degree that we can,” Mr. Lifka wrote in an e-mail message. “International students benefit the campus in many ways, including financially, but given our large overenrollment and anticipated demand from resident applicants, we may be forced to scale back targets for international students.”
Paul Desruisseaux, associate vice chancellor for public affairs at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said that his campus was also preparing for budget reductions, but that “changing the demographics of the student body to create a better revenue stream is not the way the campus is going to view this issue.”
