U. of California to borrow millions for online classes.

Penn State what? Just kidding.

Abner

 

The UC online program is being promoted by the central UC system administration, and not by any specific UC campus. It's not clear whether credits would be issued by an existing UC campus (or campuses), or by some new UC entity.

In either case, however, the presumption is that UC's traditional admissions standards would apply. As noted above, these are intended to restrict admissions to the top eighth (12.5 %) of high school graduates, which is a pretty significant level.

Obviously some UC campuses are more popular than others, and this means that some effectively have higher admissions standards than others. However, even the least popular UC campuses tend to be well regarded by national standards. For example, you implied that UC Santa Cruz (at #72 USN&WR National Universities) is one of the least prestigious UC schools, and on a state level, this may be true. But on a national level, UCSC still compares favorably with well-known "flagship" state universities like UConn (#69), Iowa (#72), Indiana (#79), or Alabama (#79). So even if the DL credits are awarded by the UCSC campus, that's not such a bad thing.