<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley is one of three selective campuses at the University of California where the state’s Legislative Analyst recommends raising out-of-state tuition by $6,000 a year, far higher than at other UC campuses. UCLA and\u00a0UC San Diego are included in the recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yalonda M. James\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
If the University of California wants to raise some quick cash \u2013 say, $80 million over four years \u2013 it should consider charging non-Californians thousands of dollars more to attend its three most popular campuses, says a new report from the state\u2019s Legislative Analyst\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
The report<\/a> asks, effectively, why not? Other public university systems commonly charge higher rates at their flagship campuses, says the Legislative Analyst, an independent adviser to the state Legislature, suggesting that out-of-state applicants might even like to pay more for the privilege of attending one of UC\u2019s most selective campuses: UC Berkeley, UCLA or UC San Diego.<\/p>\n \u201cFamilies could view a higher sticker price as an indicator of higher quality,\u201d claims the report from the office of Gabriel Petek, California\u2019s Legislative Analyst, which said, \u201cUC is unusual\u201d among university systems in charging non-residents the same rate at each campus. The 12-page report said the University of Michigan, for example, charges out-of-state students 4.5 times more to attend its Ann Arbor campus than the one in Flint.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The office also said its research found that nonresident enrollment does not suffer when flagship campuses charge higher prices.<\/p>\n For these reasons, California lawmakers should ask UC to consider raising nonresident tuition by $6,000 at its top three campuses as of the 2027-28 academic year, while raising the out-of-state price tag at UC\u2019s seven other campuses by $2,000, says the Legislative Analyst, who they had asked to look into whether varying prices at campuses would be a good idea.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n UC\u2019s governing Board of Regents currently has no plans to do so.<\/p>\n A UC spokesperson did not respond directly when asked whether the regents would consider the four-year pilot program recommended in the report, saying only that the university \u201clooks forward to conversations with the Legislature on the best way to fund our mutual goal of California undergraduate enrollment growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But UC\u2019s student government condemned the idea without hesitation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we understand the fiscal pressures on the state related to funding for higher education, the costs cannot be covered by throwing students under the bus,\u201d Aditi Hariharan, president of the UC Student Association and a UC Davis senior, told the Chronicle.<\/p>\n She said that raising out-of-state tuition to higher-than-expected levels at the three campuses would make them less accessible, and that the cities of Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego are \u201calready highly unaffordable for most students.\u201d<\/p>\n About 15.5% of all 237,616 UC undergraduates<\/a> are from beyond California, or about 37,000 students. The rates are higher at UC\u2019s most selective campuses: 20% at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, and 19% at UCLA.<\/p>\n Out-of-state students also pay 3.5 times the base tuition for California residents: $54,858 as of fall 2026, compared with $15,588 for in-state students.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n During the last decade, UC campuses saw non-residents as a cash cow and admitted them at increasingly higher rates. This outraged Californians who saw this as selling off one of California\u2019s most precious assets: a seat at UC. So in 2017, the regents and the Legislature agreed to cap out-of-state admissions<\/a> at roughly 18%, with leeway for campuses that had already exceeded the limit.<\/p>\n In 2022, the university implemented its \u201cTuition Stability Plan<\/a>,\u201d in which the price rises each year by a predictable percentage \u2013 but only for incoming students. Everyone else keeps paying whatever they paid during their first year.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the stability plan gave students predictable pricing, the multiyear tuition system also gave\u00a0 breathing room to UC. Before then, tuition was often a wild ride: double-digit increases<\/a> in some years \u2013 prompting student protests and occasional violence \u2013 or no change in other years<\/a>, prompting UC officials to moan about how they would pay their bills.<\/p>\n But UC has always charged just two rates: one for in-state students, and another for non-Californians.<\/p>\n Now, the Legislative Analyst is recommending a third, higher rate for non-residents at UC\u2019s three most prestigious campuses and suggests testing this over four years beginning in 2027-28.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Raising the out-of-state rate by $6,000 a year at the three campuses, and by $2,000 at the other ones, would bring in an additional $20 million a year, the report estimated. This would yield $80 million over the four-year pilot program and could be used \u201cto supplement core funds at UC\u201d or to offset any cuts from the state.<\/p>\n The Legislative Analyst acknowledged that a side-effect of this could be to shut out lower-income students and \u201cshift enrollment toward wealthier applicants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThough Berkeley and UCLA are notably more selective than UC San Diego among nonresident students, we encourage the Legislature to include UC San Diego in the pilot\u201d to study the effect and see if the system might also work well at other campuses, such as UC Irvine, the report said.<\/p>\n Although UC is autonomous under the state Constitution, meaning that the Legislature can\u2019t tell it what to do, lawmakers can influence the regents \u2014 notably by withholding state financing or incentivizing certain behaviors.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The sides are currently in the final year of a five-year \u201ccompact\u201d in which the university agreed to add 8,000 in-state undergraduates over four years, make it easier for community college students to transfer in, and boost online classes in exchange for predictable, yearly funding increases to UC.<\/p>\n In its report, the Legislative Analyst said that if UC ultimately adopts the recommended higher tuition at UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego, it should also track any impact on enrollment, admission offer rejections, and whether the campuses are losing lower-income students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley is one of three selective campuses at the University of California where the state’s Legislative Analyst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,15,143,145,144,2012],"class_list":["post-328888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-education","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-university-of-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}