Research · UC admissions · The $276M compact
California paid $276 million to swap out nonresident students. The swap is unwinding.
In 2022 the state struck a deal: Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego would replace 902 nonresident students a year with Californians, and taxpayers would cover the lost nonresident tuition. In 2025-26 the state paused the payments. This page shows what the entering classes did next.
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The findings, in plain English
The reduction the state paid for is going back. In Fall 2022, the deal's first year, the three campuses' entering classes were 21.5% nonresident — down from 30.6% the year before — and the reduction deepened every year the money flowed: 21.5, 20.9, 20.2. In Fall 2025, the year the funding paused, it reversed to 26.9% — almost exactly where the campuses sat in 2019 (27.0%), before the deal existed. San Diego made the full round trip.
The money stopped first. The 2025-26 state budget paused the program's funding while — in the Legislative Analyst's Office's words — it "retained the expectation that UC replace 902 FTE nonresident students with resident students." The campuses' answer is in the admit files: it was a decision, not a yield accident. In one cycle the three campuses raised domestic nonresident admits 24% and international admits 44%.
Nobody's compliance report will show this for years. The deal's 18% cap is measured on total undergraduate enrollment — a four-class average that keeps falling after the entering classes turn, because the larger pre-deal cohorts are still graduating out. The entering class is the leading indicator, and it has turned.
Nonresident share of the entering class, Fall 2019–2025
First-year enrolled students at the three compact campuses. 2020 is omitted as the pandemic cycle; 2021 is the last class admitted before the deal.
| Fall | Three campuses | UC Berkeley | UCLA | UC San Diego |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 27.0% | 28.2% | 25.1% | 27.6% |
| 2021 last pre-deal class | 30.6% | 29.7% | 31.0% | 31.1% |
| 2022 deal year one | 21.5% | 22.2% | 22.9% | 19.3% |
| 2023 | 20.9% | 20.4% | 20.9% | 21.5% |
| 2024 | 20.2% | 16.3% | 20.6% | 23.0% |
| 2025 funding paused | 26.9% | 25.3% | 24.2% | 30.5% |
The rebound was a decision: nonresident admits at the three campuses
Enrolled students are admits times yield. Yield did not swing — the offers did.
| Fall | Out-of-state (US) admits | International admits |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 13,335 | 6,108 |
| 2023 | 12,957 | 6,269 |
| 2024 | 13,229 | 6,975 |
| 2025 | 16,432 | 10,061 |
And then Fall 2026
The admits went out this spring, while the Legislature was debating whether to resume the program's funding. UCLA made 6,794 nonresident offers, 42.7% of its admit pool (Fall 2025: 37.1%). UC Berkeley made 4,522 nonresident offers, 32.4% of its admit pool (Fall 2025: 31.4%). UC San Diego made 16,982 nonresident offers, 44.0% of its admit pool (Fall 2025: 44.0%). UCLA's jump — 5,070 to 6,794 nonresident offers in one year — is the largest nonresident admit share in the ten cycles of UC data this site holds. Enrolled counts for these classes arrive with UC's winter data release.
The money, in order
- 2022 — the deal: Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego replace 902 nonresident students a year with Californians; the state backfills the lost tuition (nonresidents pay roughly three times in-state tuition). Target: nonresidents at no more than 18% of undergraduate enrollment by 2026-27.
- April 2026 — CalMatters counts the real cost: $276 million so far against the "$31 million annually" officials cite, a projected $460 million through the phase-in, then about $153 million a year to sustain.
- 2025-26 budget — the state pauses the program's funding while retaining the swap expectation. UC's spokesperson had told CalMatters the mechanism in advance: replacing a nonresident with a resident "is not an even exchange absent sufficient state buyout."
- January 2026 — the Governor proposes $61 million to resume. The Legislative Analyst's Office recommends pausing the plan entirely and notes that none of the three campuses is yet under the 18% cap — and that in the most recent year San Diego added 265 nonresident FTE while Berkeley and UCLA cut 22 and 169.
Why the compliance number won't show this for years
The 18% cap is measured on total undergraduate enrollment — every class on campus at once, which behaves like a four-year average of the entering classes. An average turns years after its inputs turn. In 2024, the entering class was 20.2% nonresident and the four-class average was about 23.3%. In 2025 the entering class jumped to 26.9% — and the four-class average still fell, to about 22.4%, because the 30.6% class of 2021 graduated out of it.
So the metric the deal is judged on will keep improving through the 2026-27 compliance deadline on the strength of classes admitted before the reversal — while the entering classes, the number that decides what the total looks like in 2029, have already crossed back. None of this is hidden. It is published in pieces that never meet: record-admit press releases in July, enrollment in a dashboard months later with no release, compliance measured on the slowest-moving number available.
Get the data
Every campus, every residency group, applicants through enrollees, 2017–2025, from UC's own freshman admissions summary. The mechanism behind the over-admit machine — who gets admitted versus who actually enrolls — is on the companion page, UC yield by campus and residency.
Download the full table (CSV)Method and limits
- Source. First-year applicants, admits and enrollees by campus and residency are from the University of California's own freshman fall admissions summary. Fall 2026 admit figures are UC's preliminary release; enrolled counts for 2026 do not exist yet. Budget and FTE figures are from the Legislative Analyst's Office and CalMatters, credited where used.
- First-year classes are not the compliance metric. The deal's 18% cap applies to total undergraduate enrollment, which this page argues is the lagging measure. A campus can meet the cap on schedule while its entering classes move the other way.
- Part of the 2025 rebound is international recovery. International enrollment recovered across all of UC after the pandemic-era decline; that tailwind is not specific to the three compact campuses. The domestic out-of-state admit increase is not explained by it.
- Correlation, stated as such. These numbers do not prove the funding pause caused the admit reversal; they show the reversal followed the pause within one admissions cycle, at the campuses covered by the deal, by the mechanism UC itself described. The campuses have not been asked for comment on this page.
- 2020 is omitted from the timeline as the pandemic-disrupted cycle; including it does not change any conclusion.