UC may decrease in-state admissions due to planned state cuts
While the University of California has been on an upward trend of increasing in-state admissions in previous years, they may stop accepting as many students if planned state cuts go through, state lawmakers warned, according to CalMatters.
“University of California cannot afford to continue increasing enrollment with less funding, it just can’t,” UC system provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Katherine Newman said at a California State Assembly budget subcommittee hearing, according to CalMatters. “If the state cuts the university by 8%, we will be forced to decrease enrollment for the fall of 2026 admission cycle.”
The UC and California State University systems faced proposed budget cuts after a decision by the governor’s office last year, now indicating that its effect is coming to term with the reduction of these students. California’s budget faces multi-billion-dollar deficits, which it has been grappling with for the last few years, but was exacerbated by devastating wildfires in Los Angeles in February.
Additionally, the Trump administration has ambitions to lower federal funding for research by hundreds of millions annually, including $460 million in cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which funds much of the life science research at the UC.
The UC has increased its enrollment of California students by 16,000 in the last five years. The state legislature has been adding $30 million to the UC so it enrolls fewer out-of-state students and more in-state students — funding that is now at risk of being deferred for 2025-26.
“So blowing up class sizes, reducing advising, limiting opportunities for our students: This is not a recipe for the continued success at the University of California, and we would not want to go in that direction,” Newman said, according to CalMatters.
The UC and CSU had additional time in the last budget cycle to figure out how they would plan for their share of permanent cuts, when other state agencies received 8% cuts in the previous budget. The cuts by all agencies would total $770 million annually if Governor Gavin Newsom and lawmakers agree to them, and UC’s share would make up roughly $400 million.
Any enrollment reductions would be deferred to the next application cycle and not affect fall 2025-26 admitted undergraduate students. UC Associate Director of State Governmental Relations Seija Virtanen told CalMatters that the UC’s 10 campuses could sustain an ongoing cut of $125 million.
UC Berkeley opens a $110 million engineering center
UC Berkeley opened the Grimes Engineering Center on April 21, with the Dean of Engineering calling the space a “nexus for student life” and that it would empower future generations of innovators, according to the Daily Californian.
“One of the concepts I just love is interoperability,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons said in an interview after the event, according to the Daily Cal. “This building is a physical manifestation of that same principle, and it’s going to pull people together.”
The Grimes Engineering Center will host programming on entrepreneurship, inclusive excellence and international studies, and house the Berkeley Center for New Media and K-12 outreach, campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in an email, according to the Daily Cal.
Its collaborative study spaces and upper-floor study spaces will open in early May. An auditorium and lounge will open mid-May and a library will open in June.
The building’s $110 million cost is entirely philanthropy-funded. It is named after Janelle and Michael Grimes, donors and UC Berkeley alums.
It is a remodel of a previous building that opened in 1980, known as the Bechtel Engineering Center. The new center is the first-ever structure to use shape memory alloys to withstand wind or earthquakes, according to the architecture’s website.
Campus researchers helped design tension rods made of SMA cables that will snap back after a seismic event and are visible throughout the building.
The Grimes Engineering Center is on its way to earning a platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, Dean of Engineering Tsu-Jae King Liu said, according to the Daily Cal.
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the Apr. 24, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
