Ask any University of California undergrad where he comes from, and the answer – with 94 percent certainty – will be somewhere between San Diego and Crescent City.

That may soon change.

UC should recruit higher-paying students from out of state over the next five years to take the place of thousands of in-state students, an influential commission that advises the UC regents decided Tuesday in San Francisco.

The commission said that UC enrolls about 15,000 California students beyond what the state pays for, and the university would do better financially with more out-of-state students.

“This could be done without displacing students for whom the state is providing funding,” said UC Provost Larry Pitts, who serves on the UC Commission on the Future that is headed by UC President Mark Yudof and Russell Gould, president of the Board of Regents.

The issue raises questions of fairness to California residents, and what to do with the displaced students, say advocates of greater accessibility to California’s premier public university.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/01/BAFR1F6EQV.DTL&type=education#ixzz0yMkCWPzA