Transfers rise, freshman enrollment to decline

A record number of California Community College transfer students have been offered UC admission for fall 2009, while the number of students indicating their intentions to enroll as freshmen have declined.

Both outcomes are consistent with enrollment management policies UC Regents adopted in January. Regents followed UC President Mark Yudof's recommendation to increase the transfer student enrollment target by 500. At the same time, in response to state budget cuts, Regents agreed to curtail first-time freshman enrollment by 2,300.

"This actually is a modest reduction in that it aims to bring our enrollments into line with our resources over several years rather than in a single year," Yudof said at the time of the policy adoption. "It also enhances access through the community college transfer route, which is a path to the university that needs to be widened."

UC campuses have offered fall admission to a record 19,607 California Community College students, a 12 percent increase over the 17,513 offered fall 2008 admission.

About 81.8 percent of California Community College students who applied to transfer were offered admission.

While final fall 2009 enrollment figures won't be available until January 2010, 34,296 California resident students have indicated their intent to enroll as freshmen. That is down 6.5 percent from 36,683 in fall 2008. Based on this preliminary outcome, UC will succeed in reducing its freshman class by 2,300.

In both transfers and freshmen, UC continues to make progress in increasing the number of underrepresented students. African American, American Indian and Chicano/Latino students account for 21.2 percent of the admitted transfer students. Underrepresented minorities make up 24.2 percent of the projected entering freshmen.