Slash enrollment

UC Berkeley prepares to slash enrollment after California Supreme Court ruling

The decision by the Supreme Court justices to reject UC Berkeley’s application for a stay in the case means the school will need to shrink its student population before the fall semester begins.

By ALEXANDER NIEVES

The California Supreme Court has rejected a request from UC Berkeley to pause a lower court order to freeze its enrollment — a ruling that will likely force the university to slash its admissions for the next academic year.

Impact: The decision by the Supreme Court justices to reject UC Berkeley’s application for a stay in the case means the school will need to shrink its student population from 45,057 to 42,347 by the time fall semester begins. The university’s admissions department has said a mandated reduction in students would result in the loss of more than 3,000 undergraduate seats and 5,100 fewer admissions offers being sent to high school seniors and transfer applicants.

What happened: The Supreme Court will not intervene in a Superior Court ruling from August that ordered the school to cap enrollment at 2020-21 levels, which dipped as some students decided to take time off because of the pandemic. That decision stemmed from a fight between UC Berkeley and a neighborhood group called Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, which has a history of challenging the university’s building projects.

It was a 5-2 decision, with Justices Goodwin Liu and Joshua Groban dissenting.

The Superior Court judge found that school administrators did not properly consider the effects of expanded enrollment on the neighboring city when it submitted an environmental impact report for a construction project on the edge of campus.

The Supreme Court’s decision does not mean that the enrollment ruling is guaranteed to stand in the long run. The case is currently being heard by a state appeals court, which also denied the university’s request for a stay, saying that attorneys for UC Berkeley waited months before applying for relief.

UC Berkeley reaction: UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof called the ruling “devastating news for the thousands of students who have worked so hard for and have earned a seat in our fall 2022 class. Our fight on behalf of every one of these students continues.”

Legislative movement: State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has introduced a bill, CA SB 886 (21R), that would exempt certain campus housing developments from the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires state and local agencies to study the environmental impacts of construction projects before approval.

Past legislation to circumvent CEQA, which housing proponents say has been misused by neighborhood groups to prevent new construction, has run into opposition from environmentalists and some labor groups.

The recent fight over university construction has brought the issue back to the forefront as record numbers of applications from California high school students collide with a severe lack of housing at many of the state’s public schools.

California has dedicated funding to expand enrollment by 5,000 full-time students at University of California schools and 10,000 full-time students at the California State University System. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposals aim to further increase enrollment by the 2026-27 school year.

What’s next: UC Berkeley plans to begin mailing admissions offers on March 23. The university has said that it would limit those offers to 15,900 applicants if a stay was denied, down from its original allotment of 21,000 admissions offers for the next academic year.