UC Santa Cruz needs to admit more local students

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A troubling statistic buried in the San Francisco Chronicle’s analysis of University of California admissions data should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about educational opportunity in our community: Santa Cruz High School had the second-lowest acceptance rates to UC Santa Cruz of any high school in the entire state.

For comparison, last year’s students from The Quarry Lane School, a private school in Dublin that costs $50,000 per year in tuition, had double the acceptance rate of Santa Cruz High students. 

Other local high schools had varying acceptance rates to UCSC, with Pajaro Valley High at 55%, Harbor High at 68%, but none were substantially higher than the state average of 62%. (The Chronicle didn’t have enough data to report rates at Scotts Valley, Soquel or Pacific Collegiate high schools.) 

Interestingly, Santa Cruz High students had an above-the-state-average acceptance rate at UC Davis and UC Irvine.

We live next to a world-class public university. Our community should be proud, integrated with and supportive of UCSC. And yet, our kids have less chance of being admitted than students from hundreds of miles away. 

This isn’t just an abstract inequity — it has real consequences for families and for the future of Santa Cruz.

I say this as someone who has taught at UC Santa Cruz for more than 20 years. I appreciate and love this university. I’ve seen firsthand how it transforms lives, how it brings together bright young minds from across California and beyond, and how it enriches our community. 

But it needs to do better by local kids.

One of the biggest expenses of higher education isn’t tuition – it’s room and board. Living expenses at a UC campus can easily surpass $20,000 per year. For a local student accepted to UCSC, those costs could drop to almost nothing by living at home. When students get rejected by UCSC, they are forced to attend other universities, often in places where affordable housing is even scarcer — and their families must shoulder that enormous extra cost. For working-class families, that can mean additional loans, deferred retirement savings, or students working long hours just to make ends meet.

Or, it could mean deferring college altogether. 

Ironically, this reality runs directly counter to the UC system’s stated goal of reducing student debt and making college more affordable.

Some might argue that admitting more Santa Cruz High students means fewer spots for others from across the state. But local students bring something unique to the campus: a deep knowledge of the community that benefits everyone. Imagine arriving at UC Santa Cruz from Los Angeles, Sacramento or San Diego. The campus is beautiful but isolated, and you don’t know the best hiking trails, the local businesses that give the town its soul, or the nonprofits where you might volunteer or work. Local students could serve as ambassadors, helping newcomers integrate into the community and discover the experiences that make their college years richer and more connected.

Instead, admitting fewer locals means fewer bridges between campus and town life. This separation fuels the perception that UCSC is a city on a hill, disconnected from the community. When the UC system places a campus in a community, it should create an implicit partnership. The university benefits from local infrastructure and services. In return, it should invest in the success of local students. 

Several public universities already incorporate local preference in their admissions. For instance, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Long Beach treat applicants who graduated from geographically defined local high schools with extra consideration – demonstrating that giving preference to students from the surrounding area is an established and feasible policy. 

The idea is simple: If you grow up in the community that hosts the campus, you should have a better-than-average shot at attending.

Such a policy would strengthen ties between UCSC and the people of Santa Cruz County and do the same for other UC campus communities. It would allow more local students to attend without uprooting themselves, reduce their financial burden, and foster a campus culture that is better connected to the city. If the UC system is serious about affordability and community engagement, it should adopt a formal preference for qualified students from the counties where its campuses are located.

The city and UCSC are locked in litigation over the university’s growth plans. When and if a settlement is reached, I hope that a local preference is included for students applying to UCSC. Along with building more housing, accepting local students can reduce the impact on our housing market and crushing rental prices for families and students alike.

This isn’t a call for favoritism at the expense of merit. It’s a recognition that merit includes more than test scores and GPAs. 

Local students bring lived experience, community knowledge and long-term investment in the region that out-of-town students can’t match on Day 1. 

The Chronicle’s data should be a wake-up call: Santa Cruz High students are being shut out of their own backyard university, forced to pay tens of thousands more for the same education they could receive without leaving home. 

That’s not just bad for them — it’s bad for all students and for the community as a whole.

Ryan Coonerty is a former mayor and county supervisor. He has taught legal studies and politics at UC Santa Cruz for more than 20 years.