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I guess it depends on what you call ‘covering’. Certainly the taxpayers are paying the state portion of the costs.</p>
<p>Does the state of CA subsidize out-of-state students, or do out-of-state students pay the full cost of their public CA education?</p>
<p>If CA, or any other state, subsidizes OOS students, should they?</p>
<p>A lot of kids from my Big 10 engineering school wound up with jobs in CA. Should CA benefit from the other 49 states subsidizing the education of their company recruits?</p>
<p>“I just can’t see why any OOS student would pay LAC prices for a big university experience, especially a big university that is in the middle of budget flux”</p>
<p>Because few schools - that includes every LAC in the country - have the national or the international renown of a Berkeley, UCLA and even (in some fields) UCSB, Irvine and Davis. Fact is, they’re world class universities with a world class reputation for attracting top faculty, researchers and scholars. And until that changes, you will continue to see out-of-staters flocking to these schools.</p>
<p>The comments about the UCs acceptance system may be out of date. UCSD went to a holistic application process this year. Acceptance rates are highly variable between declared majors. </p>
<p>Also tuition rates don’t include high, mandatory fees. In state tuition and fees for UCSD were $11,330 this year.</p>
<p>Tuition, fees, room and board are close to $25,000.</p>
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<p>Once upon a time the State of California believed it had a public obligation to provide a free college education to every California resident who qualified for one; at that point the state’s “share” was 100% of the cost. Over the years the state has retreated from that position, with taxpayer dollars providing a declining share of the cost of undergraduate education, and tuition and fees providing a steadily growing share. It has now reached the point where tuition revenue from in-state students, combined with legislative appropriations, is still not enough to cover the costs of undergrad education. It’s in that context that the UC system is increasingly turning to OOS students, whose tuition is roughly 3-4 times the in-state rate, to fill the budget gap. That’s the sense in which I mean the state’s contribution of tax dollars doesn’t “cover” the cost; if the UC system were made up of 100% California residents paying in-state rates, the tuition revenue combined with the state appropriation would leave the university awash in a sea of red ink, necessitating either massive program cuts, enormous tuition increases, or both. In that budget context, the idea that California taxpayers are somehow subsidizing OOS students seems completely misguided to me. OOS students are part of a fiscal solution that either saves taxpayers money, or saves in-state students money, or both.</p>
<p>What’s interesting is that as OOS students increase, and the schools are increasingly “selective”, the actual educational quality is declining, in some cases, rapidly. Class sizes are much larger. Career services are cut. There are hiring freezes for faculty. Fewer upper class electives. Undergraduate research opportunities reduced. Less tutoring. </p>
<p>At UWashington, it is becoming rarer all the time to finish in four years. (So the school gets to college FIVE years in OOS tuition!) </p>
<p>These places in some cases may have world renown. It takes awhile for reputation to catch up to actual educational quality, especially when “selectivity” goes up.</p>
<p>It’s not the OOS students causing that decline. It’s another way that the schools are trying to save money.</p>
<p>Of course! don’t want to confuse cause and effect. But even the OOS students are getting less than what they think they paid for - they just haven’t realized it yet.</p>
<p>^ mini,
I don’t think you can generalize here. The same conditions don’t apply at all the top publics.</p>
<p>No, that’s true. But it is generally speaking the case at virtually all of those on the west coast, from Berkeley on down. And I’d be surprised if lots of the big publics elsewhere aren’t experiencing similar. Probably worth checking 4-year graduation rate from 6-7 years ago and today. (Though that might not tell the whole story either: if they are taking in higher percentages of wealthier, and OOS, students, graduation rates should, by the nature of the thing, go up, though there are schools such as UVA and W&M that have very small numbers of low-income students - lower, in fact, than some of the Ivies.)</p>
<p>I agree, Mini. My latest college kid will be heading off to an OOS public in September, and the state has cut massive amounts of funds that will directly affect his school. His school appears to be on the rise from these last 5-10 years ,but how it will weather this new storm remains to be seen.</p>
<p>My friend’s D was not accepted to the same school with much higher test scores, somewhat but not sharply lower grades. The mom, my friend, works at the university which gave her the privilege of getting a warning phone call of the rejection. She tells me that the school has accepted a lot of OOS kids this year to get the extra funds that way. Now, the OOS premium is $10K which I think is more than fair. I think the tuition costs for the school are on the high side for state schools for in state kids, offset somewhat by reasonable room and board costs. So for that extra $10K, they may have turned down in state kids they ordinarily would have accepted. We’ll see for sure when this years stats are released, but that is the word I am getting.</p>
<p>Also, I am fearing a sharp increase in costs. Another friend of mine sent her D to College of Charleston some years ago and was caught mid stream in a drastic rise in OOS costs. That school was once a steal for OOSers.</p>
<p>“As for the money—you’d better believe it’s about money. Since its OOS tuition is roughly triple the in-state rate, Michigan actually hauls in substantially more tuition revenue from the 1/3 of the class that’s OOS than from the 2/3 that’s in-state.”</p>
<p>Fact Check: UM’s tuition is almost exactly double for OOS vs IS, not triple.</p>