Why California’s Public Universities Are So Good

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08/29/2023 09:18

Subject: Why California’s Public Universities Are So Good

quote

Anonymous

It’s no surprise that Princeton and Harvard made the top 25 colleges, but despite California’s woes, four of its public universities did so too.

California has had a rough few years. Wildfires, drought, flash flooding and mudslides have devastated parts of the state and driven away major homeowners insurance providers. Retailers are leaving San Francisco en masse and tech companies—including Meta, Slack, Salesforce and PayPal—are slowly moving jobs out of that city, subleasing or selling their office space in favor of remote work. Housing is unaffordable for many and homelessness is growing. Meanwhile, one California jewel continues to shine—its state college system.

Four of the University of California’s 10 campuses earned a spot in the top 25 on Forbes’ 2023 America’s Top Colleges list: the University of California Berkeley (#5); the University of California, Los Angeles (#7); the University of California, San Diego (#21); and the University of California, Santa Barbara (#24). All eight Ivy League colleges made the top 25, but only one other public school—the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (#23) made that cut.

To be sure, flagship schools in other states rank highly—the University of Washington, Seattle Campus (#26); the University of Florida (#27); and the University of Virginia (#29). But no public university system dominates our list like California’s. Among our top 100 for 2023, 44 schools are public. But remarkably, 12 of those 44 are in California. Along with the four UC schools in the top 25, there’s University of California, Davis (#37); San Diego State University (#43); the University of California, Irvine (#61); the University of California, Riverside (#75); California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (#83); San Jose State University (#87); California State University, Fullerton (#90) and University of California-Santa Cruz (#92).

Not surprisingly, Reddit is peppered with questions about how to establish California residency in order to qualify for in-state tuition, and the University of California maintains strict criteria to determine a students’ legal residency. Moving in with your Laguna Beach-based grandparents isn’t enough—to be deemed a California resident, undergraduates must either be dependent on parents in California for at least 366 days prior to the first day of instruction, or considered financially independent, which involves holding a California driver’s license, voter registration and for some, a California tax return.

Notably, part of California’s recent increase in state spending has been dedicated to direct grants for middle class residents as well as poorer students, holding down the percentage of California state students who borrow and their total debt. For example, only 33% of California four-year college students took out federal loans in 2019-2020, compared to an average of 44% in the rest of the U.S.

Among the eight Ivies, the share of Pell grant recipients ranges from 12% (at #9 ranked Harvard) to 23% (at #6 ranked Columbia). By contrast, among the four UCs in the top 25, the Pell range is 27% (at #5 ranked UC, Berkeley) to 33% (at #21 ranked UC, San Diego). At the highest rated state school outside of California, #23 ranked University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, just 18% of students get Pell Grants.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2023/08/29/why-californias-public-universities-are-so-good/?sh=40f9d39d16c8