<p>I’d just add that being a commuter is and should be a perfectly acceptable way to attend college, especially for students who are fortunate enough to live within commuting distance of a college that meets their educational needs. If anything, the commuters might end up with a better academic experience, because dorm life is not always conducive to studying, especially among younger students. </p>
<p>Just adding that the SDSU honors program requires participants to live in the dorms first year too. They have their own special dorm which is a nice plus along with required study abroad… this can be a plus to local students who really don’t want to stay home and worry that being a commuter will preclude study abroad (though sucks for local families who need commuter status financially but want honors.)</p>
<p>It’s a party school in the way that all schools can be party schools. The Greeks went through a really bad PR periods a couple years back. However, it’s not like it used to be and we know lots of really focused kids attending… you really have to be to graduate on time.</p>
<p>The three-tier structure is not all that unique. Pennsylvania has it, with its “state supported” universities (mainly Penn State, Temple, and Pitt), its Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education system (West Chester, Millersville, Indiana, Kutztown, et al.), and county-based community colleges. New York may call every thing a SUNY now, and administer it with the same bureaucracy, but not so long ago there were SUNYs and State Colleges, and everyone remembers which was which.</p>
<p>That middle tier tended to be public teachers’ colleges (i.e., women’s colleges) originally in most states where there is this kind of three-tier system.</p>
<p>US News isn’t everything but, the performance the CSU and UC system on these and other rankings (and in life) is remarkable, especially when you consider the budget challenges CA has had for the past decade (heading the right direction now).</p>
<p>Take a look at the West Public school list - 6 of the top 10 and 11 of the top 20 are CSUs - and SDSU and CalMaritime are are ranked highly on other lists. 5 of the top 10 National Publics are UCs (and UCI is #11). I didn’t vote for him but, Jerry Brown and team deserve a big pat on the back for this performance. </p>
<p><a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities/top-public”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities/top-public</a></p>
<p>While it’s true taxes are lower in our neighboring states, we get 2 world class university systems and reasonable tuition in return (in addition to great weather and a few other perks). </p>
<p>Many of us Californians take this for granted, in fact many of us talk down the ‘lower’ UCs and nearly all the CSUs. This evidence suggests we’re being a bit short sighted.</p>
<p>These schools are one of the key reasons all the cool companies are headquartered here. </p>
<p>@NCalRent I agree that we are lucky. See <a href=“California Master Plan for Higher Education - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Higher_Education</a> for how the plan was put in place in 1960, when Jerry Brown’s dad was governor.</p>
<p>I wanted to also give a hat-tip to the CA community college system, which is probably also tops in the nation as far as community colleges go. (I know our local CC recently tied for #1 CC by one ranking organization.) They are low-cost (free except parking and textbooks back when I was a kid) and provide generally good instruction and a clear path to transfer to the UC and CSU systems. There is even a plan for some of the CCs to begin offering 4-year degrees in specialized vocational areas. Besides serving kids who can’t afford or qualify for the 4-year universities, the CA community colleges do a great job of meeting dual-enrollment needs for HS kids along with retraining and enrichment learning for adults.</p>
<p>I agree with @Ynotgo regarding California’s community college system. My older son (UCD student) came home this summer to work and took 2 GE classes at our local CC. He met students from England, Australia, Georgia and New York and asked them why they were here attending a CC in California. They all answered that California has some of the best CC’s in the country…</p>
<p>Also agree with @Ynotgo about CA community colleges. Unfortunately, during the draconian budget cuts a few years ago, our CCs were hit very hard and were forced to turn away hundreds of thousands of students, which is really tragic because CCs are the door to a better future for so many. With the voters approving a tax increase last year, schools from K to post graduate are now being re-funded.</p>
<p>The CSU in my city has 60 or 70 majors and cranks out teachers, nurses, PTs, cops, and computer science folks at a prodigious rate. Sure, we need doctors and investment bankers, but where would we be without the CSU-type graduates? They do the bulk of the skilled work in our world.</p>
<p>What does one make of the low graduation rates? Does any of that have to do with not being able to get classes, or is it mostly to do with the type of students that end up at Cal States?</p>
<p>Any school that has a large number of local, commuting students is going to show lower graduation rates because the students don’t always attend full time, continuously. The students are more likely to be juggling work and family responsibilities with school. </p>
<p>I also think one of the reasons is that many more students nowadays want to double major or adding a minor here an there and stretching the years in college. On LinkedIn I saw one of D1’s high school still not graduated from Berkeley yet. He should be done 2012. So he has 6-year graduation rate because he is studying for couple different engineering subjects, like nuclear engineering and CS. He also is a TA there so must get cheap tuition or some kind of discount.
If not with this discount he probably graduated the same time as my kid did. No one wants to pay $65k tuition wants to delay graduation. At UCs the cheaper tuition cost must facilitates the professional student as we used to call them or the perpetual student.</p>
<p>So I checked this friend of my daughter and he fiannly did graduate in 2013, it took him 5 years with 2 bachelors degree. He is now entering the PhD program at Berkeley in CS.
So I doubt that statistics take into account that he graduated with 2 degrees.</p>
<p>What about the aid given by the UC’s and the CSU’s? My son wanted to go to a CSU and live on-campus, but the aid was lacking so much that it was hard to turn down the UC’s. UC’s gave much more in institutional grants which paid his housing and meal plan in conjunction with the Cal Grant for tuition. The CSU’s also did not have financial aid packages together in time before decision day (and we were timely and all documented on our end) so we pretty much had to go with the school who offered the degree he wanted and the best financial package which was a UC. Not sure if this was related to some sort of budget problem for the CSU’s this year, but it worked against them for my family.</p>
<p>The CSU’s are less expensive but the UC’s offer aid to middle income families so costs can be just about even if you qualify for Blue & Gold or receive gift aid from a UC. </p>
<p>From what I’ve read here CSUs do not give aid for room and board so that’s why the UCs are cheaper if you get aid. UCs financial aid covers housing but not at CSUs.</p>
<p>Blue & Gold is tuition only so If you compare a B & G UC package to a no-aid CSU package you basically have a tie.</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo The CSU’s suffer the same dynamic as community colleges. A lot of kids graduate from high school, grateful to be done, never really liking school but don’t know what else to do but continue. Many would be better served going straight into the work force and then returning to college a few years later when they have a better idea what they want and understand what they must do to get there (of course, difficult to do and not a system built for return students.) Focused and eager kids aren’t going to have a problem but yes, I’d say the CSU’s get more kids who are higher-risk from dropping out than say Cal or Stanford. </p>
<p>Difficulty in getting classes might be a reason for some… like if they run out of money. I believe cal-grants are only renewable for 4 years. </p>
<p>At least the graduation rate for kids who transfer INTO the CSU’s from community colleges is respectable.</p>
<p>I’ve actually run the calculators and find that, unfortunately, it’s not a break even deal between UCs and out of the area Cal States.</p>
<p>liveonboca, your story sort of bums me out. I was somehow hoping there would be internal scholarships at the Cal States that would bring the cost down to the UCs, but it sounds like it’s not the case.</p>
<p>When I run calculators with our income, this is apx. what I’ve gotten:</p>
<p>SDSU basically free tuition because of the Cal Grant and being a commuter school</p>
<p>UCSD free tuition because of the Blue Gold program and being a (far) commuter school</p>
<p>UCI about $9500</p>
<p>UCLA about 8K</p>
<p>Fullerton, SJSU, CSULB all about 11-11.5K</p>
<p>SLO about 12K+</p>
<p>I was kind of hoping that a kid like mine with strong SAT and GPA (but NM commended, not SF), if he got into a Cal State, would get some internal scholarship that would bring the cost down to the UCs level.</p>
<p>I don’t know if my son should apply to the Cal States at all if there’s no possibility of getting the cost lower.</p>
<p>This is the reason families like mine look at top schools. They are much more affordable. According to my calculations, straight off the bat with no addition scholarships, I found seven schools that would be affordable and fit my son’s interest. Three are reaches (including one UC), one is another UC, two are local, and one is a safety out of state.</p>
<p>The Cal States, as they stand, aren’t affordable without considerable loans. Perhaps I’ve answered my own question why the graduation rate is so low-many people who start at an out of area Cal State simply can’t afford it.</p>
<p>I know one young man who graduated from Fullerton with 20K in debt. He got a philosophy degree with an econ minor (or other way around) and is paying off is 20K in loans while doing pest control at $13 an hour.</p>
<p>I guess I need to rethink the whole Cal State thing even though there are some great majors at the out of area Cal States (industrial design, animation and strong music programs).</p>
<p>My son really wants to go away to college and live on campus. I’ve encouraged him to really work hard at essays and his last series of tests in order to get into an affordable out of area college.</p>
<p>Cal states are best for commuters.</p>
<p>I believe Cal States do give merit scholarships if what some of my dd’s HS class mates say it’s true. Apparently several of them are commuting to CSU San Marcos, their service area college, for close to free because of this. They are middle to upper middle class families who are not likely to qualify for financial aid. I wonder if others do that too and if so if the merit scholarship could be stacked on top the of financial aid given or not. Something to ask about the particular colleges?</p>
<p>The financial aid probably depends on individual circumstances… My son entered a CSU as a transfer student after working for several years, the year he turned 23. He was still a year shy of the age when FAFSA would view him as independent- even though he had lived on his own for 3 years, supported himself, and was not my dependent for tax purposes. With the money he had saved up while working plus his salary history – and with my income and assets counted as well - he had a FAFSA EFC of close to $20K. Even if he had been able to to get into a UC as transfer at the time (not really feasible as he was still a few units shy of junior standing) – the tuition cost differential would have been hard to manage. At the time, CSU tuition was still a lot less than it is now - but the differential between full tuition at a CSU vs. UC was probably still about the same. So my son’s plan was to spend down his savings to pay for school the first year, then hopefully get better financial aid the next year, when he qualified for a full Pell grant. (It worked – he also applied for and received outside scholarships his senior year, so essentially his costs were fully paid). </p>