Mills College students and alumnae, still staggered by the news that the 169-year-old women’s school in Oakland will soon stop enrolling students, learned Thursday that 200 UC Berkeley freshmen will flood their campus next fall.
“Mills has agreed to be the location for UC Berkeley’s ‘Changemaker in Oakland Program,’ a brand-new program that will allow 200 Berkeley first-year students of all genders to live and study on the Mills campus during the 2021-22 academic year,” Mills President Elizabeth Hillman wrote Thursday in a letter to Mills students and employees.
Hillman added that the news was important enough to deliver during spring break because last week’s announcement that Mills will issue its last degrees in 2023 and will stop enrolling first-year students after this fall “has brought forth a tide of emotions and questions, many of which concern what to expect next at Mills.”
Students and alumnae say they are determined to get the trustees to reverse their decision at Mills, one of just 37 women’s colleges left in the country, according to the 2021 Collegewise Guide to Women’s Colleges. They plan to protest at 4 p.m. Friday at the school.
On the Facebook page Save Mills, with 1,600 members, students and alumnae had mixed reactions to news that UC Berkeley students will flood the campus. Some saw it as way to help Mills survive. But others quickly calculated the effect of 200 UC Berkeley students on the Mills campus of just 609 undergraduates.
“Students are attending Mills to be surrounded by women, and those that identify as such,” one woman posted. “We need to move fast!”
Another wrote: “Wow — another surprise. I can’t help feeling a bit concerned,” prompting a discussion of whether UC Berkeley’s so-called “Berkeley Bro” culture will find its way onto the Mills campus.
Mills enrollment has dropped by more than 20% since 2018, to 609 undergraduates. Graduate enrollment fell by 28%, to 352 students.
Yet Mills began losing enrollment only in 2014, college records show. A year earlier, with 1,595 students — 917 undergraduates and and 625 graduate students — enrollment was the highest since at least 1990. It remains unclear why enrollment declined every year since then after years of increases.