UC Closes Door to Mid-Year Community-College Transfers

BERKELEY, Calif.

Community college student Anoop Kaur expected to work hard and make good grades to transfer to the prestigious University of California.

She didn't expect her future to depend on whether state officials have the smarts to handle California's money troubles.

Last month, students such as Kaur got a jolt when the UC system closed its doors on almost all mid-year community-college transfers, saying they couldn't afford to take the 1,500 expected transfer students for the next term.

And it's likely to get much worse next fall. UC may have to cut enrollment growth by 5,000 students, and the California State University system also expects to turn away thousands of students.

"We've just got some serious problems here," says UC Regent Ward Connerly. "This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of number of students that we have to turn away."

The disappointed students were the latest casualties of a multibillion-dollar budget mess that set the stage for the raucous attempt to recall Gov. Gray Davis.

More than that, the rejections, made without even looking at the applications, were a blow to a longtime social contract, known as the Master Plan for Higher Education, that assures California's top students a place within the UC system.

"It's just not something that's fair," says Kaur, a student at Ohlone College in the San Francisco suburb of Fremont. "A lot of students who come to Ohlone or other community colleges come because it's cheaper or they need to do better. They work so hard. To cut that off — it's really not fair."

UC has tried to find other ways of dealing with a $410 million cut in state funding, but system President Richard C. Atkinson said "we have reached a point where the educational experience at the University of California will be severely compromised if we continue to grow without funding to support new students."