Yep, some people still think the world is flat or Alabama is a better university than Stanford.
Funny creatures.
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Alabama has a better football team.
Under that methodology, Alabama is the superior school.
NY Times jumping on the bandwagon:
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Yes. Some parts of the university are very under resourced. It depends on the major. We looked at ucb for cs. We were told that there are classes that are more than 1000 kids in size, and the spillover kids watch the lecture on cc tv once the classroom gets full etc.
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Sure the cost is way higher than it is for in-state residents (who help subsidize the UCs through their taxes), but its no more than, and often less than, the other top public universities in the country for OOS admits, as well as most private colleges.
UCLA costs $68K for OOS including room and board. UMich is $72K for OOS and UVa is $73-74K (despite the latter two being in less expensive local markets).
By comparison, Columbia is $86K. NYU is $83K. Case Western is $83K. As just a few examples…
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The other public OOSs are no better. And I am not sure I am a fan of nyu either for that level of tuition. They are approaching the size of a public school. I don’t have a strong opinion on cwru. never looked at it. Columbia was considered.
How much is it to get the Compass package on USNWR? After clicking through a couple of screens it wanted my email address and to sign up before it would show me a price.
I don’t know if large class size is such a terrible thing. Like many other things, this depends so much on the student!
S23 is taking two large lecture classes right now (concurrent enrollment at our local university, which happens to be UCB). He just called me after a lecture, full of joy and excitement because this class is so much fun for him. He is finding that he likes the big class feeling, and doesn’t mind being in a class with hundreds of students as long as the professor is engaging. I know what he means, because I have enjoyed big classes in the past, too. With the right professor, a big lecture can have some of the same excitement as a sold out movie or a big sports event.
D26, on the other hand, does best in the smallest possible class. 20-30 students feels like a big class for her. She would rather have fewer than 10 students. We’ll see if she still feels that way when it is time for her to choose colleges…
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For Cal or UCLA from in-state point of view, I would wonder whether it is worth paying many times the amount to go to a private because the classes are going to be crowded during the first year? Is it actually worth paying far more for a private school that is still generally not considered a T5 CS school like Cal?
I see why OOS people wouldn’t want to pay high fees for crowded CS classes. But in-state, a year of crowded classes seems like a better choice than going private.
I think it’s $49 if I recall correctly.
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Mmmm… this statement is pretty false. I’m paying <$60k/year for UCLA OOS, and the quality of student life is much better than what I’ve seen with similarly ranking private institutions where I would be paying $85k (no need based aid anywhere). Unless those private schools are taking students from their dorm to class in limos… I would’ve chosen UCLA over a private ~T20 any day
Looks like Columbia fudged the data and they are being penalized for it. Yes #18 is absurd but their #2 ranking before was kinda suspicious too.
I think their well-documented anxiety/ambition of wanting to be seen as bona fide peers of HYPSM got the better of them and they made some questionable decisions.
I’d disagree. There are definitely some publics like Michigan that don’t face nearly as much overcrowding as cal.
We’re a new in-state UCLA family and there have been a few times where I’ve been shaking my head and being grateful that we are not paying OOS tuition…
Orientation was a little disorganized about communication, leading some kids to show up early thinking there would be planned activities for them and there were none.
Housing has been a mess for some, with freshmen being paired with juniors or seniors in triples—meanwhile, UCLA had emailed earlier offering freshmen opportunity to apply to change from a triple to a double, suggesting that perhaps there was excess room in housing.
The registration process is akin to buying concert tickets to the hottest show in town. Super stressed kids hitting tech glitches and they didn’t get anything they wanted to take.
For us, it’s been smooth sailing. My daughter got her desired classes, picked her roommates, housing confirmed them and her micro-refrigerator. But for those who have had a bumpier ride and are paying OOS, I don’t blame them for being pretty annoyed.
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Classes don’t need to be crowded at a private T5. My son at Princeton has had mostly 20 sized classes in CS. There were probably 2-3 larger CS classes, and another small number of 40-50 sized classes in subjects like Econ.
UCLA OOS COA is 68k+
I did it this morning (it gave NO indication there was a cost). I thought it was $39.95? Frankly, I was a bit disgusted at the bait (seemingly free access to more data) and the switch (cash required to do so), I stopped. I posted about it here earlier today.
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The point was that classes at top privates are more likely to be small. However, for many people, it isn’t worth paying a lot of money for that. Most of the classes at Princeton seemed to be small when I worked there.
Regional does not take into consideration the very large differences within regions. For example, the variation on CoL within the Chicago Metropolitan Area is as large as the variation between this region and downstate Illinois. The faculty at UIC live in areas within a very wide range of CoLs, from places like the Pilsen neighborhood to River Forest, with some living in far more expensive places.
Of course, regional price parities indexes are given by state, and using the same average state financial data for, say, Hyde Park in Chicago (UChicago), Dekalb (NIU), and Carbondale (SIUC). Even in Chicago, the median cost of single family home where UIC faculty live is around 1/2 the median cost of a single family home where most UChicago faculty live.
Of course, an issue which I did not touch upon was the fact that only public universities are required to publish faculty salaries. Private universities are not, and will generally both hide the number of contingent faculty who work for them, as well as their salaries. The existence of these, and their numbers, rarely comes to public notice until another adjunct dies in poverty (like NYU’s Margaret Mary Vojtko or Thea Hunter), or they go on strike.
Probably asking actual teaching faculty. Another good idea would be to ask the people who hire the graduates, like industry, education, etc.
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