Students Pay the Price As Universities Cut Back

The article, “UCI Rejects Thousands of Transfers” (Sept. 12) creates much disappointment and frustration at the high school level and poses some very real problems for students and their families.

For the past few years, we have been openly counseling many students on the attractive and viable option of community college enrollment prior to transferring to the University of California system. Not only were such transfers assured by admission personnel, but such planning also resulted in an obvious great savings of the cost of postsecondary schooling.

The revoking of this promise lessens not only the credibility of the UC system, but that of hard-working high school counselors and administrators as well. In the future, when is a promise not really a promise?

The fact that thousands of hopeful transfer students were turned away this year will only result in creating a dilemma for the UC system in the future. Rather than lessening the number of hopeful students awaiting admission as freshmen, it will only result in creating a surge of applications, now that the door has been slammed via the community colleges. That will be unfortunate for all of us.

CHARLES KEITH, Assistant Principal, University High School, Irvine