A recent court decision from the Supreme Court of California ruled that the University of California, Berkeley must freeze its enrolment to 2020-2021 levels, effectively barring thousands of students that otherwise would have received an offer from attending the school in the fall of 2022.

UC Berkeley, which consistently ranks as the best public university in the country, typically sees over 9,000 first-year and transfer students attend each fall out of the over 21,000 individuals that are offered admission. Although more admission offers were planned for 2022, the court ruling, a result of a long legal battle with Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, a local housing activism organization, will mean that 3,000 fewer admission offers will be sent than initially planned by the university. This enrolment freeze to levels of previous years disproportionately affects freshman students, and UC Berkeley estimates that it will lose more than $57 million in tuition.

Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods’ legal filings come on the basis that the large number of admission offers being sent each year, along with the less-than-adequate supply of new housing for these students, is resulting in gentrification and damage to Berkeley’s historically-affordable neighborhoods. Due to lack of on-campus housing, many UC Berkeley students have resorted to the surrounding neighborhoods, which has raised prices and displaced the low-income families that used to live in these areas. Citing the increasing amount of homelessness in Berkeley, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods has sued UC Berkeley in the past, including most recently in 2019 to stop the university’s Upper Hearst Project.

Gov. Gavin Newsom attempted to file to stop the UC Berkeley enrolment freeze, emphasizing the importance of realizing the dreams of thousands of students that may be undermined because of the lawsuit. The university itself is considering offering the option for new undergraduates to study online until 2023 to mitigate the impact of the enrolment freeze, though both UC Berkeley and Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods recognize that this solution is far from ideal for students.

The news comes at a particularly difficult time for out-of-state and international applicants. In 2021, the California Senate proposed to almost halve the proportion of non-California students at the UCs, from the current 18% to 10%. For UC Berkeley, non-California applicants already face lower acceptance rates, from 17.5% for in-state students to 9% for international applications. However, in-state residents justify the enrolment cap because much of the funding for these institutions come from California taxpayers.

It is unclear when the legal dilemma will resolve, and it is entirely possible that the enrolment cap will stay at the mandated level for future students seeking an education at UC Berkeley. What is clear is that, despite the fair rationale behind the freeze from the perspective of both Berkeley residents and California taxpayers, the enrolment cap will result in thousands of students having their dreams shattered, an especially painful blow upon realizing that such did not have to be the case without the enrolment freeze.