The UC Board of Regents recently unveiled a proposal to admit 10,000 more residents of California into the UC schools. In the 2016–17 academic year, the university will admit 5,000 more Californians. “The University of California is meeting the challenge of educating as many students as it possibly can to meet, and solve, the challenges of the future,” UC President Janet Napolitano said. In the following two years there will be additional increases of California residents by 2,500 spots per year. If executed correctly, the state budget will allocate $25 million worth of funding for the UC system. The goal of this enrollment increase is to improve the chances that California residents will be admitted into local universities. But do we actually have room for them?

This proposed enrollment increase is a plan created solely to appease the state, gain more funding and prove that the UC system is beneficial for California residents. While it is a step in the right direction to include more local residents at our universities and to cut down on the recruitment of international students as high-tuition payers, who currently represent 28.4 percent of the student body at UCSD according to the Los Angeles Times, we must also be realistic about the quantity of students that the UC system can support. The six colleges at UCSD are already overcrowded with students squashed together in single rooms converted to triples and in the overstuffed Nobel/Arriba and MTS buses. The procurement of more state funding sounds nice, of course, but the UC Regents seem to underestimate how many additional costs extra students will bring in. Are we as a university prepared to construct a seventh college, when we haven’t even bothered to officially name the sixth one yet?

“We are committed to sustaining increased access to our campuses and the world-class education they offer,” Napolitano said at the Board of Regents meeting. This so-called world-class education may suffer if the proposal passes. We must remember that quality and quantity of our education system are often inversely proportional to each other. Without a doubt, by accepting increasingly numerous amounts of students, the quality of education at the university will surely suffer. Most concerningly, the UC Newsroom announced that “as faculty are added in tandem with more undergraduates, graduate students will support faculty in the university’s research mission and help with the teaching load associated with undergraduates.” The same quality of education cannot be derived from the instruction of teaching assistants as from highly-educated professors. Furthermore, graduate students should not be unfairly taken advantage of in the university’s efforts to procure state funding. Both undergraduate and graduate students are ultimately present at UCSD to receive a top-notch education, not to merely assist professors.

As accepting more in-state students into the UCs requires raising faculty employment, potential increases in monetary support of undergraduate student enrollment comes in hand with allocating an additional $6 million in state funding to enroll 600 more graduate students. Having more money to expand graduate student population, however, does not guarantee that, as teaching assistants, college graduates will receive fair salaries. In fact, recent protests that took place on UC campuses, such as last week’s Million Student March and protests organized by students and faculty during last spring quarter, remind us that TAs’ labor is largely underpaid. Working part-time, graduate students are not affected by the recent minimum-wage raise implemented in October. Therefore, if the proposed budget plan is approved by UC Regents, an increased number of graduate teaching assistants may face underpayment — a solid reason to express skepticism toward benefiting Californian undergraduate students at graduate students’ cost.

To generate additional funds in order to provide for more in-state undergraduates, the University of California suggests phasing out the need-based aid provided to nonresident undergraduate students. According to the plan, this measure should bring in $14 million in 2016–17. While the aid cut should not affect already-enrolled nonresident students, the complete elimination of need-based scholarships will certainly taint the image of UC schools as international institutions accepting students regardless of their cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

If the budget passes in its current form, not only might graduate teaching assistants and international students experience financial difficulties, but the lack of proper infrastructure to host more scholars will disadvantage all UC students. Admittedly, attempts are being made to build new housing units and parking structures. This September, the UC Board of Regents Committee approved the East Campus housing project that aims to replace old buildings and construct over 1,000 new living premises for graduate students and professionals. However, these long-term projects do not address the needs of undergraduates, the most prevalent on-campus group, and will not be able to accommodate new students due to the later deadlines.

The University of California initiative to accept more Californians is neither novel nor improper. As a public university system, it should indeed set the interests of in-state students as its main priority. Relocating funds to attract more California residents, nevertheless, is a premature measure that should be preceded by improvements in infrastructure and working conditions for the faculty. And if the number of international and out-of-state students must go down, it should not disadvantage those in need.