The governing board of the University of California approved on Thursday the university’s revised 2018-19 budget plan, which reflected the reduced tuition fee by $60.
The tuition reduction — from its current $11,502 to $11,442 annually — results from the end of a temporary surcharge instituted in 2007 to recoup damages from two earlier lawsuits filed against the university.
The class-action lawsuits, one filed in 2003 and the other in 2007, stemmed from allegations by the students at UC’s professional schools that the university raised their tuition without sufficient notice. The university had disagreed with the claims but lost both cases on appeal, costing the university nearly $100 million in the litigation process cost.
UC’s Office of the President said that nearly all of those costs will be fully recovered by the fall of 2018.
On July 11, the university announced that it offered nearly 137,000 students a spot on at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses this fall, including more than 28,750 transfer applicants, the highest number in the history of the university.
More California undergraduates are currently enrolled at UC than at any point in its history, and after last year’s enrollment jump of some 5,000 California students, the university anticipates it will have far surpassed its goal of adding an additional 10,000 Californians by the 2018-19 academic year.
According to the university, the preliminary admissions numbers show increases in offers to students from historically underrepresented groups and among California freshmen and transfers who would be the first in their families to graduate from a four-year college, with first-generation students comprising 46 percent of the total.
“Among freshman applicants, Asian American students remained the largest ethnic group admitted at 36 percent, followed by Latinos at 33 percent, whites at 22 percent and African Americans at 5 percent,” the University of California said in a press release.
“American Indians, Pacific Islanders and applicants who did not report a race or ethnicity made up the remainder of admitted students,” it added.