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There's going to be 6.8% fewer freshmen figuring out post-secondary life on the nine University of California campuses come fall, and that's precisely what the schools were hoping for, according to the LA Times.
Of course, they aren't happy about it; the UC schools face a budget shortfall, which means they have the ability to serve fewer students--2,603 fewer incoming freshmen in the '09-'10 school year than in '08-'09, to be precise. Less money with which to operate, less acceptances. Here in Los Angeles, "at UCLA, the most competitive campus, the acceptance rate was 21.4%, down from 22.1% last year."
The UC's, in fact, thought perhaps they'd see fewer applicants, due to the rising cost of higher education in the state, but that appears not to have been the case. However, it appears many students opted not to accept their UC offers, which Susan Wilbur, the UC system's director of undergraduate admissions, believes is "partly because the admitted class had very strong high school records on average and many probably were accepted as well by prestigious private colleges, including some with generous financial aid."