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Court Orders UC Berkeley to Cap Enrollment

The University of California, Berkeley may need to cut its incoming student body count by as many as 3,050 students after being denied appeal in a case between the university and a local community group.

California’s Supreme Court denied UC Berkeley’s appeal to lift the enrollment cap after a lawsuit by Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, a community group, alleged that the university’s expansion was impacting local housing availability, Inside Higher Ed reports.

UNIVERSITY IS “DISHEARTENED”

“We are extremely disheartened by today’s ruling by the Supreme Court of California, which leaves intact a lower court order that will reduce and then freeze enrollment at 2020–2021 levels and prevent thousands of students who would have been offered in-person admission to the University of California, Berkeley, this fall from receiving that offer,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof wrote in a statement. “This is 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.”

Mogulof has stated that UC Berkeley will offer at least 1,500 incoming first-year and transfer students online enrollment for fall or deferred admission next January for the spring semester in order to meet the court’s enrollment cap order.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZER: UC USES STUDENTS AS “PAWNS”

Last Thursday, the president of the Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods community group released an official statement to the court ruling.

“While we are pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the trial court’s imposition of a temporary pause on enrollment growth pending UC’s compliance with completing an adequate environmental analysis of enrollment growth, we’d like to assure deserving California high school students that we are as disappointed as they are that UC has tried to use them as pawns in UC’s attempts to avoid mitigating the impacts from the massive enrollment increases over the past few years,” Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, says.

Bokovoy also went on to describe the community’s accusations against the university’s expansion efforts.

“By creating a tremendous housing shortage in Berkeley, the Regents have made it impossible for many students, particularly students from lower income families, to attend Berkeley and the data shows that Pell grant recipients have fallen from 34% to 26%, with the housing crisis a major contributor to that decline,” Bokovoy says.

Sources: Inside Higher Ed, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times