<p>oh I was referring to Dearborn/Flint, wouldn’t MSU be more like CSU? I’m not very familiar with the Michigan system ):</p>
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<p>I believe that you know the reason why, and is the same reason that Berkeley is suffering from its current budgetary woes: recent taxpayers and in-state students have wanted a top-quality education without having to pay for it. Prior tuition hikes have stoked immense resistance, and the administration lacks the political will to refight that battle.</p>
<p>^^sorry, sakky, I’m just not that smart to know the reason why the Regents do what they do. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that lowering Merced’s prices would then compete directly with the Cal States, and the UC Regents just don’t want to go down that path. It is also probably the reason why the Regents limit the MA programs offered by the UCs. Columbia and Chicago, for example, use MA/MS programs as cash cows. Clearly, Cal (and UCLA and UCSD) could do the same – no dorm space needed. </p>
<p>The Regents/Legislature also have a egalitarian philosophy – they don’t want to admit that Cal is worth more than Merced. In their view of the world, all UCs are the same. As a result, Merced gets to build a med school, while Cal suffers.</p>
<p>IMO, Dean Edley at Boalt got it right: charge market rates, with a slight discount for instate. Boalt will cost $66k for instaters next year vs. $74k for OOS. At ~$70k, USC Law is right in between Cal’s instate and OOS COA. Stanford is $74k. Chicago Law = $70k.</p>
<p>Question ballpoint: if you are willing to pay $55k to attend Cal, why do you think that instaters won’t be willing to pay more? (Note, I am not recommending the full $55k.) But start cranking up the tuition. There are plenty of wealthy families in the state. Set the increases for future students only and announce it early so families can plan. Offer much better financial aid, but only for four years (just like most privates).</p>
<p>“if you are willing to pay $55k to attend Cal, why do you think that instaters won’t be willing to pay more?”</p>
<p>Did you forget to read the Yahoo News that day when we made the headlines for seizing Wheeler Hall? Everybody went berserk because the tuition hit the 5-digit price per year. Most in-staters are NOT willing to pay more. Maybe you are, but most in-staters don’t. Accepting more OOS was the logical responsce from even further tuition hike.</p>
<p>Don’t think too hard about this issue; what’s done is done. People are already mad about the increased tuition for the upcoming semesters so accepting more OOS was the natural move. (Please don’t say we could’ve accepted more students, because the city of Berkeley only wants 35,000 UCB students a year)
If you’re one of those people who participated in the protest for raised tuitions while complaining about the increased percentage of OOS, you are only contradicting yourself.</p>
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<p>It seems as if you’re smarter than you think you are, for you’re exactly right. Nobody seems to want to admit that certain UC’s are more important than other UC’s. </p>
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<p>Bluebayou, UpMagic has it exactly right. Most instaters are not willing to pay more tuition. And obviously most state taxpayers are not willing to pay higher taxes for higher education either, and haven’t been willing for years. {Which is why - like I said - the notion of reduced taxpayer political support for Berkeley is probably unpersuasive to the administration, as they had already lost that support long ago.} Hence, like I said, Californians - both the students and the taxpayers at large - want a world-class university but don’t want to pay for it. Perhaps you, boquist1, and a handful of others are willing to pay more, but most others surely aren’t. </p>
<p>They instead want a killer deal. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anybody who is being given a killer deal; I too would like a killer deal of a top education without really having to pay for it. But killer deals don’t tend to last very long.</p>
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<p>Well, let’s be perfectly honest, law students are not exactly a constituency that generates much political sympathy. It’s hard to make an emotionally charged political case that law students at one of the top law schools in the country - and who are likely to receive the types of salaries immediately upon graduation that most state taxpayers will never dream of making anytime in their lives - should nevertheless continue to receive a hefty taxpayer-supported discount on their education. {It surely doesn’t help when people remember the infamous Shakespearean line from Henry IV, pt 2 to build a utopia: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”}</p>
<p>But undergraduates are different. First off, not only are there far more of them compared to law students (by over an order of magnitude), but they are also largely viewed as a supposedly vulnerable and downtrodden class. In response to a tuition increase, they can always wave the bloody shirt of ‘reduced access/opportunity’.</p>
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<p>Yeah - that’s an actual OOS student who agrees with my general intuition about in-state Berkeley admits/attendees. </p>
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<p>Ballpoint made basically a point that was contained in my posts. And I think my posts very well answer that question, and ballpoint answers it too. </p>
<p>Read the list of schools I put forth (some are more plausible than others) - my guess is lots of in-staters would SWARM to those schools over Cal. There is terrible prestige associated to attending Cal as an in-state California students. Few HYPSM rejects (and let’s face it, those gunning for the top public U in the world included a large number of people trying for those schools and other Ivies, etc) are going to stomach settling for Berkeley. </p>
<p>In fact, to increase Berkeley’s undergrad prestige, it would appear we’d have to go even more against the desire of in-state parents like boquist1. We would have to lower the size of the student body and be willing to accept more on talent alone and less on the basis of location - which is what our PhD programs do to gain top level prestige, for instance. People should overwhelmingly get their classes, be very welcome into research (this is there to a degree, but not nearly anywhere close to what some private schools offer), and the undergrads should not be clearly below the caliber of Ivy League admits. I’m not saying Ivy League students are all terrific - after all, admissions to those schools involves politics too; but they’re still better, due to the higher selectivity typical of those schools.</p>
<p>Ballpoint seems to be on the much stronger end of OOS admits, and he is majoring * in engineering*, specifically with an interest in EECS; unless ballpoint got into Stanford or MIT, my guess would be that Berkeley carries tremendous prestige as an OOS student. Ballpoint is probably much more academically oriented than the typical fairly-good-stat Berkeley admit as well. People serious about academics for its own sake will find Berkeley heaven.</p>
<p>Most people work hard in high school and then want something to make them feel really good about it. Almost always, they’ll pick the ego boost, along with what secures their career (or seems to). Few will opt for the idealism of pursuing thrilling academics for the sake of it and braving the numerous other issues Berkeley will make them face, when they could have it easier and feel better about themselves.</p>
<p>@mathboy98: were you an in-state applicant or OOS? haha</p>
<p>To give you guys a better perspective as an actual applicant who has lived both in-state AND out-of-state: if I had continued to live in CA through high school, I would probably have picked Cornell over Berkeley for the same reasons that mathboy98 mentioned, even with the reduced IS tuition. </p>
<p>There is something about coming from out of state to Berkeley that many in state students do not feel. Many of my friends who live in CA see Berkeley as a “state school” regardless of how awesome it may be. People I know here see Berkeley MUCH more so as one of the most prestigious research institutions in the world. Regardless of whether it was the right decision to accept people like me or people with better stats and whatnot, you must remember that: as the flagship of the UC system, Berkeley’s mission is not only to serve students in CA, but also maintain world-class research, teaching, and service – frankly it can not maintain the world-class student body and faculty required to do so in the current environment by only admitting in state students.</p>
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<p>[University</a> of California: StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu%5DUniversity”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu) suggests that , *for 2008-2009<a href=“two%20years%20ago,%20latest%20available%20at%20that%20site”>/i</a> freshman admissions, the chances of admission to Berkeley were:</p>
<p>4.00-4.19 UC GPA, 1800-2099 SAT-R: 32.6%
4.00-4.19 UC GPA, 2100-2400 SAT-R: 58.2%
4.20+ UC GPA, 1800-2099 SAT-R: 62.5%
4.20+ UC GPA, 2100-2400 SAT-R: 81.6%</p>
<p>While the given stats are in the last category, they are just barely there, which means that the actual chance of freshman admission for 2008-2009 was likely lower than 81.6%.</p>
<p>Now factor in the fact that admissions at all highly selective schools has gotten significantly more competitive in just the last two years, with many schools setting records for numbers of applications (for Berkeley, about 52,900 freshman applicants in 2010-2011, versus 48,418 in 2008-2009). Even without any policy change with respect to in-state versus out-of-state admissions, it is likely that an applicant with the given stats moved from a “probable, but not certain, admit” in 2008-2009, to a “maybe accept, maybe reject” in 2010-2011.</p>
<p>“There is something about coming from out of state to Berkeley that many in state students do not feel.”</p>
<p>When I decided to go to Berkeley, there were two different responses from people around me. One was “where is Berkeley?” and the other was “oh, so you decided to become a hippie?”. Actually, I have to add the people who said “since when were you that interested in music?”
What it matters is that I don’t recall anyone saying “oh, what a great school!”. And no, I am not from Mars, I am actually from somewhere in highly-populated urban area in U.S. I honestly didn’t believe I was going to a “prestigious research institution”, I chose Berkeley simply because I loved the aura as I was visiting the campus, and I still do. I realized Berkeley is actually a fantastic school after I came.</p>
<p>My point is there are students who come due to fantastic academic/research program, but there are some folks like me who come because they feel that Berkeley is the right school for them. Having a world-class research is just a huge bonus.</p>
<p>^^^this is true. the only people who seem to see what type of world class education Berkeley is are the engineers who work with my parents. they are ecstatic that i was accepted and am going to receive an amazing education. everyone else doesn’t seem to know where cal is, which is sad.</p>
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<p>I was in-state. However, I’m the sort of person who is very unimpressed by where a person goes to school - I’m of the camp that believes I got a real steal, and am not brilliant enough to at all feel entitled to what I got. I find it hilarious when people are laughing about the lack of prestige at so or so school, when I know for a fact that foreigners of a few generations up have come from far and wide and received graduate education at far less than ‘top name’ schools, many having 10 times the intensity, intelligence, and drive (I’m talking whether acing a technical competition, figuring out something new and creative, or rising far in the ranks of top corporations and making millions of dollars) of a vast majority of Ivy League admits I know. </p>
<p>No, I’m not one of those people who thinks Asian science competition machines are all geniuses either - I well acknowledge the subtlety going into declaring someone impressive.</p>
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<p>I am both surprised and saddened. </p>
<p>Yet what’s ironic is that, at least for the non-humanities, Berkeley still recruited plenty of new faculty during the last academic year. The academic job market generally closes during each summer, but when the market reopens (generally around the late fall), I expect Berkeley to be actively recruiting once again. Faculty ain’t cheap. Surely for the price of even a single new assistant professor (including benefits and lab/research budget), you could surely backfill the fellowship shortages for numerous PhD students. </p>
<p>For example, a new assistant professor at the Haas School will easily cost ~$200k in his first year alone, including summer support, bennies, office-space, and research budget. And I suspect that Haas assistant professors are not even the highest paid of all new faculty - that honor probably goes to the assistant professors at the law school. A new assistant prof at even the lowest paid department (whatever that is, probably one of the humanities) will still likely draw more than $75k, including bennies, research budget, office space, and summer support. How many PhD fellowship ‘funding gaps’ could that fill? </p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley, Dept of Chemistry](<a href=“http://chem.berkeley.edu/jobs/2010_asst_prof.php]UC”>http://chem.berkeley.edu/jobs/2010_asst_prof.php)</p>
<p><a href=“https://ittakes30.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2010/10/06/faculty-positions-at-uc-berkeley-and-stanford/[/url]”>https://ittakes30.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2010/10/06/faculty-positions-at-uc-berkeley-and-stanford/</a></p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley Economics Department Faculty Hiring](<a href=“http://elsa.berkeley.edu/econ/dept/recruitment/facopening.shtml]UC”>http://elsa.berkeley.edu/econ/dept/recruitment/facopening.shtml)</p>
<p>[ARN</a> Jobs: University of California, Berkeley - Faculty Positions](<a href=“http://www.ssrn.com/update/arn/arnjob/job10183.html]ARN”>http://www.ssrn.com/update/arn/arnjob/job10183.html)</p>
<p><a href=“Programs | Goldman School of Public Policy | University of California, Berkeley”>Programs | Goldman School of Public Policy | University of California, Berkeley;
<p>[Employment</a> Opportunities Center for Computational Biology](<a href=“http://qb3.berkeley.edu/ccb/join-us/employment/]Employment”>http://qb3.berkeley.edu/ccb/join-us/employment/)</p>
<p>UCBALUMNUS, all true. From the perspective of a CA parent this makes things all the more frustrating. Because even absent any significant marginal shift in the ratio of in state/OOS from something approximating 90/10 toward 70/30, no doubt it would have become more difficult given the general environment impacting all high end schools, public and private…Add this ratio shift and it has made things far worse, obviously, for candidates like my son, and kids of other parents coming down the pike.</p>
<p>Perhaps I am in a small minority that would have been happy to pay a premium to standard in-state rates to have had the opportunity to have my kid attend Berkeley. It has its issues like any school, but at it’s core it’s a fantastic university and anyone going there at in-state rates ought to wake up every morning and pinch themselves for how fortunate they are. The comments about wanting something for nothing in many of the earlier posts are indeed right on target, unfortunately it’s a broader statement in society that manifests itself in many places.</p>
<p>So, I’m a realist, there’s no changing the current situation, and frankly I think it is only going to continue to move in this direction. I’d not be surprised to se CA population at 60% in the near future. I’m sorry for many of my friends who are UCB or UCLA alums, and who have chidren approaching the zone…frankly they have little idea how hard it will be for their kids to attend the same school that they did. And no…, a strong statement and high five from the President of the UC telling them how they should be so thrilled their kid has the chance to go to Merced to get a UC quality education ain’t going to cut it with that crowd. But such is life.</p>
<p>So I’ll be donning red and cheering for the Trojans for the next four years. As much as that pains me as a lifetime UC’er (fight on? really?), I know my son’s going to get a fantastic education there. While I’d have preffered to send that same check to Sproul hall, he’s very excited about USC, happy, and no doubt will thrive there, and that’s all a parent can hope for. SC is on a roll and there’s no sign it’s going to slow down, it seems like a good time to be there.</p>
<p>I wish you all the best, and thanks for a very intellegent and insightful conversation</p>
<p>sakky;</p>
<p>your love/comments for lawyers notwithstanding, do you really believe that thousands of instaters would not thankfully pay $xx extra to attend Cal over Irvine or SD? </p>
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<p>Perhaps that is a chicken-egg issue. In general, Americans equate value with price. (Marketing 101) Since Cal cost the same as Merced… :)</p>
<p>Overall acceptance rate was around 26% this year. That’s, like, easy.</p>
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<p>Many (if not most) times, it’s not the parents making the decision on where to go. It’s the kids. The one EXCEPTION is actually the case this does not cover, I think - when Cal is way, way cheaper and still offers a world class education, despite lacking Ivy League prestige for in-state undergrads. In this case, I think parents who are significantly aiding their sons’ and daughters’ financial path through college will push hard for Berkeley. But that’s the case we have right now, not the would-be one where it’s way, way more expensive.</p>
<p>And the kids aren’t going to judge the school by how much it costs so much as how hard it was for them to get in, and the general prestige attached to attending.</p>
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<p>Perhaps on the much lower end of the student spectrum, where they have no better options.</p>
<p>I think we’re looking at the wrong place right now though 
first fix admissions, which frankly seems to admit plenty of mediocre students in place of good students. I don’t actually think qualified people are getting denied because of the OOS students - more because admissions is flawed by itself. Sure as heck was when I was accepted several years ago.</p>
<p>Frankly, this is UC Berkeley - I see no problem with raising the minimum standards to something similar to Ivy League level. If people meet exceptional standards and are getting turned down * for lesser qualified in-state students as well*, why are we worrying about the OOS so much? The bulk of their competition was the in-state students anyway.</p>
<p>Also, I feel like you should be able to put down 2 different colleges you’d like to be considered for. Maybe that’s too much to ask to be reviewed by that many colleges. But for instance, I feel like some people put down EECS and got screwed but may have gotten into Letters and Science.</p>
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<p>You would think that more people would realize the “major arbitrage” opportunity available for those who want to study CS (as opposed to EE) – they could apply to L&S, then declare L&S CS after completing the necessary prerequisites. Back when L&S CS was capped, this involved the risk of not being admitted to the L&S CS major, but L&S CS is no longer capped.</p>
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<p>The relevant question is not what I rationally believe or want, the relevant question is what is actually feasible. Heck, I rationally believe that educated, hard-working people are far more deserving of high salaries than are the walking celebrations to mediocrity that are the cast members of Jersey Shore. Yet at the end of the day, Snooki and the Situation surely make far more money than even a Berkeley Nobel laureate, and that’s not going to change. </p>
<p>What is also not going to change is that most Berkeley in-state students do not want to pay much higher fees than do students at other UC’s. You need only remember the protests that exploded around campus the last time that fees were raised. Whether those students would be willing to pay more to attend Berkeley over Merced or Irvine is not the issue, the issue is that they view paying (roughly) the same price as an entitlement.</p>
<p>One of the great truisms in social psychology is that it is worse to provide something to somebody only to later take it away than to never provide it at all. Once somebody views something as belonging rightfully to them (whether they really deserve it or not), then taking that away from them is always a gut-wrenching process. The fact that the state has always maintained that in-state fees at Berkeley be roughly the same as the fees at other UC’s means that it would be extraordinarily politically controversial to take it away now. I agree that if the UC system was founded today, we could easily implement your proposal. But there are already established facts on the ground that cannot be ignored.</p>