Enrollment

University of California officials on Friday proposed reducing freshman enrollment for next fall by 2,300 students, or about 6%, to cope with what they said is insufficient state funding. Enrollment would not be cut at UCLA and UC Berkeley, the most popular campuses, and expansion would continue at UC Merced, the newest school, according to the plan that is to be reviewed by the UC regents next week.

Saying they could not avoid a painful decision, University of California regents voted Wednesday to trim freshman enrollment for next fall by 2,300 students, or about 6%, as a response to reduced state funding during the worsening budget crisis. "None of us likes this," regents Chairman Richard Blum said of the student cut. But he placed responsibility for the action on state legislators, particularly Republicans opposed to tax increases.

Emulating a controversial practice at many colleges, two high-achieving public school districts in California are giving preference to the children of alumni. The Beverly Hills Unified School District and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have adopted legacy admissions policies for children of former students who live outside their enrollment boundaries. The policies appear to be the first in the nation at public schools, education experts said.

Freshman enrollment at the University of California will be 6.8% lower this fall, a drop of 2,603 students from last year that closely matches a reduction the university sought because of budget shortfalls, UC officials said Tuesday. In all, 35,435 students from California and other states have told one of UC's nine undergraduate campuses that they intend to enroll as fall freshmen, compared with 38,038 last year.

Declining enrollment has prompted the Los Angeles Unified School District to scale back its $20-billion school construction and remodeling program sought to relieve overcrowding and end involuntary busing. The building program, which is paid for by four bond issues approved by local voters and state funds, is believed to be the largest public works project in the nation.

The chancellor of the Cal State University system announced Wednesday that he would allow seven campuses to extend by one month an unusually early application deadline that was initially imposed on potential freshmen because of the state's budget crisis. Charles B. Reed, head of the 23-campus system, earlier this month had ordered all the schools to close their freshman application windows on Feb. 1 as a way to reduce enrollment growth that would not be funded under Gov.

Jaime Ulloa Jr. is going to make it -- his deadline, that is. The 17-year-old Carson High School senior made sure Tuesday that he electronically filed his Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a final step in his college application process. But thousands of other California students could miss an important deadline -- and that's what state officials apparently want them to do.

A record number of students have said they will enroll in the fall as UCLA freshmen, including slight increases in the number of African Americans and Latinos, campus officials reported Monday. UCLA this year received the most freshman applications -- 55,397 -- of any university in the nation. Of the 12,579 offered admission, 4,889 have indicated intentions to attend the Westwood campus. Of those, 37.1% identified themselves as Asian American, 33.8% as white, 16.5% as Latino and 4.9% as black.

Roberto Aguilar figures he has done everything right to earn a spot at a state college, working hard in high school to achieve a 3.5 GPA and SAT score of 1780. But the Pasadena 17-year-old's vision of the future -- moving away from home, meeting new friends in the dorms and exploring a new city -- is in jeopardy because of the state's budget woes.

UC regents threatened Wednesday to place some unspecified limits on freshman enrollment next fall if the deficit-battered state government does not provide enough funding to the 10-campus university system. However, the regents avoided the definitive steps that the state's other public university system, California State, proposed earlier this week to reduce freshman admission and enforce earlier than usual deadlines for applications. At the urging of UC system president Mark G.