SACRAMENTO, CA – Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, released the following statement in response to the withdrawal of admission for nearly 500 hundred students at the University of California, Irvine.
“Instead of taking the initiative to effectively communicate with students making life changing decisions, Irvine played a high stakes gotcha game with students. Sadly, this fiasco is not an isolated incident. The same thing happened two years ago at UC Santa Cruz. Back then, university officials said they would pursue system-wide admissions reform so students would not be left alone to twist in the wind with their college aspirations on hold. This repeat of history suggests nothing was done and students are paying the price. I urge President Janet Napolitano to intervene so all qualified students have a spot at Irvine and to adopt admissions reforms across all campuses. A world class university system does not nickel and dime students like this.”
As reported by the Los Angeles Times last Friday, 499 students had their offers of admission withdrawn for this fall at Irvine and allegations suggest the campus is citing paperwork technicalities to solve a problem of admitting more students than it can enroll. This occurrence mirrors what happened at UC Santa Cruz in 2015 when the admission of 508 students was similarly revoked.
These events occur in the context of the State Legislature pushing the University of California to enroll more California students, with state funding increases conditioned on targets. The current 2017-2018 State Budget directs UC to admit at least 1,500 more California students. Further information is available here.
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Contact: Anthony Matthews, tel. (916) 319-2019