“for now Colorado is a net exporter of higher education (just like the U.S.)”
But is it “just like” the US as a whole? The US tends to attract the best and brightest from other countries and then many of them want to stay (although there are certainly many others who come here, pay a lot of money and then go home). Is that the case for Colorado? If not then would it be a desirable objective (like it may be an objective for Utah and Alabama in offering large merit scholarships to attract top students)?
At a recent HS graduation get together in Boulder a HS guidance counselor said that roughly 50% of the college bound kids go out of state. She then added that it’s close to 90% when you look at the top 20% of the class. CU ends up being very expensive, so top academic kids tend to get a better offer out of state.
In not sure about those numbers, they seem a little high. CU is just one of many public universities in Colorado and while it is the most expensive there are a number of much cheaper options. As a bit of anecdotal info all three of my DD friends that went OOS all came back to CU or CSU after one year.
Besides CU mortis operandi is to admit all those well off OOS Cali kids (its like a 90% admit rate for CU OOS for Arts and Parties) take there parents money, kids have a blast, CU is funded and they go there separate ways after a couple of hazy years in Boulder, and you see why the grad rate is so bad.
Yikes. @CU123’s comments might be keeping me from allowing D21 to apply to Boulder. Lol. We are in the Chicago area and something like 20 kids from our high school are going to Boulder next year. For D21, it would be a safety and less expensive than the private schools she may get into. But all of these partying comments are freaking me out. I hope there are some serious students there and that they aren’t all engineering majors!
You do realize that partying goes on at every college? CU is no different. There are kids that can’t handle it at every college. Either your kid is responsible, or they are not. If they are not, then they are going to flame out wherever they go.
@homerdog Please don’t feel bad about CU Boulder. Your daughter can avoid parties by living in a living and learning community. What does she want to study? Boulder does not have more parties than other schools and has a pretty good 4 year graduation rate compared to any state around here, look at U of Kansas 4 year graduation rates or U of Nebraska, or U of New Mexico and they are all lower. But parties are not the reason for drop outs, the reason is almost always, that the student runs out of money to go to college here in Colorado. Some do flunk out, but is less common than you might think.
@coloradomama BTW do you really want CU to start looking like UT or UCB where top students in the state can’t even get in? There are some advantages living in a medium population state and getting a quality education with in state tuition.
@AlwaysMoving You do realize that Texas requires that the top 6% of all Texas high school graduates are auto admits to UT Austin. Pretty sure California does not have that rule. They just guarantee admittance to a UC school, and who wants to go to UC Merced?
Colorado is not worried about brain drain. There is just as big of a chance that an OOS student becomes a resident after graduation as that one who left won’t come back (but most come back).
CU has always had a lot of kids from Chicago, especially New Trier. My nephew’s girl friend is from there and her 3 sisters also are Buffs, but it’s the family school as their father and uncle played football there.
She just got a job and is staying, so another resident for Colorado.
I don’t think there is any chance for U of Colorado to approach how Berkeley or UT Austin does admissions because our state is so small, and many in state students do not want to go to college in Boulder, as strong as it is, for two reasons-
the perception that its too “liberal” (mostly false statement! ) and the high costs both housing and tuition for in state students.
Colorado is supposed to grow to 11 million people, but for now we are smaller than Arizona, at 5.6 million. We are the seventh fasted growing state, but a lot of younger people do move home after trying Colorado for a few years.
Newcomers tend to not like the isolation of Colorado from what they perceive as the “civilized” east and west coast, lack of trees, dry air, the high altitude, the surprising spring snow, the chinook winds, and the very oven hot summer if they are not from Arizona.
About half the Longmont undergrad students I know at CU move back home and commute by the way, to save money. Some even get permission to live at home for freshman year, its not always the best situation for students to live at home, but Boulder is very expensive for our in state students.
I am much more concerned that Colorado students cannot afford CU and thus they don’t go to college at all, or go to a less well known college like U of Wyoming or Montana State. Luckily U of Wyomng does have a good alumni network in Colorado, almost all the U of Wyoming graduates work in Colorado or Cheyenne WY, right on the northern border with Colorado.
The snowpack is something like 400-800% higher than normal this year in Colorado.
This means huge floods in late June this year, I predict parts of Interstate 70 will have to close down.
On a normal year, one lane of the bottom west bound part of I70 closes down for floods , it runs right next the the Colorado River in part. Thats usually right now, first week of June, but the “spring” runoff is three weeks late this year!
(I70 is a relatively new highway blasted through the Rockies, and parts completed in 1975 ) Its quite an amazing drive to follow the Colorado River and go through the Continental Divide.
Runoff is a spectacular event in the Front Range cities of Colorado, massive amounts of water pummeling down our mountains into man made reservoirs with dams, and rivers that run to Nebraska ! We are expanding Chatfield Res in south Denver on the South Platte River to avoid Denver going underwater with all the variability in weather.