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UC Berkeley statement on court ruling that leaves student enrollment freeze intact

By Public Affairs

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.

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.

Seeking legislative relief

Looking ahead, we are engaged with state leaders to identify possible legislative solutions that could address the significant impacts of the lower court’s ruling on enrollment decisions at UC Berkeley and other campuses. We know that access and opportunity for prospective UC students remains a priority, not just for the university, but also the state’s policymakers, as reflected in the recent state budget proposal for enrollment at UC.

Strategies to allow UC Berkeley to admit freshman and transfer applicants are not ideal. At the same time, we are preparing to implement enrollment reduction in case there is no timely fix. Our implementation strategies will focus on mitigating the harm to prospective students, largely by increasing online enrollment and/or asking new, incoming students to delay enrollment until January 2023. While these strategies will enable UC Berkeley to make available as many enrollment seats as we can, the lower court order leaves us with options that are far from ideal.

We are a residential university, and we would like all students to have a full, rich, in-person experience starting in the fall when all of their classmates enroll. However, we believe this effort is preferable to drastically reducing the number of offers of admission and denying so many students a Berkeley education. We have designed this strategy so that if the legislature provides relief very soon, we can pivot to making more in-person offers for the fall.