Interesting articles on how some state universities are nominally public but are becoming private

PurpleTitan, I think that when a state flagship is filled with about half OOS/foreign students, then it may not really be serving the needs of its own state residents. When it gets somewhere around that 50% mark, it is becoming more like an elite private school.

@Sam-I-Am, then the UC’s can still be said to be serving the needs of residents, ask none are close to 50% OOS/International at the undergrad level (and the state doesn’t really pay for graduate programs).

Honestly, there’s no good reason why funding of publics should be at the state rather than Federal level. Obviously, if funding was at the Federal level there wouldn’t be an in-state/OOS distinction (though there still would be with Internationals).

It is at the Federal level too in the form of Pell Grants, Loans, and research funding. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of Federal dollars exceeds the state dollars at a lot of schools. That’s just a guess on my part, I don’t know for sure.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2019/10/two-decades-of-change-in-federal-and-state-higher-education-funding has a figure 10 that shows how much money each state’s universities get from each category (federal revenue; state revenue; local revenue; net tuition and fees; private gifts, investment returns, and endowment income; self-supporting operations; other).

Neither CA nor TX are remotely close to this level (indeed TX has stricter limits on OOS students than CA). These complaints appear to be more about the selectivity of the top flagships becoming more akin to top privates (which is not necessarily bad if there are other options for less able students) rather than the percentage of students coming from OOS.

Arguably those less selective state flagships relying more on OOS students are benefitting the state by cross-subsidizing their own ínstate students and potentially even attracting future residents to the state.

Some people wants the prestige of Cal/UCLA with the selectivity of UCR/UCM, it seems.

Though I wonder if they could find that anywhere. The closest might be UW-Madison, though it’s not as if they just take anyone either. Maybe W&M.

There was a period of several years recently where people applying to the top UCs from OOS had a higher acceptance rate than California applicants. UC wanted that full-pay, OOS tuition money. California taxpayers with kids who applied to the UCs and got rejected were pretty angry about it, which is one of the reasons fewer OOS students are now accepted.

No, you have it backwards.

The UC schools are full of California students. That’s not the problem. The problem is that there is so much surplus demand from CA students and families that nearby state universities like the UO are becoming increasingly private universities for OOS Californians than for ordinary in-state Oregonians who are getting priced out and out-competed as in-state tuition creeps upwards and the university takes more and more OOS students who are carrying the extra $25K tuition. See https://admissions.uoregon.edu/uo-facts The current in-state enrollment at UO has slid to 52%. OOS makes up about 38% and foreign the other 10% which are essentially the same thing as Int’l tuition and OOS are the same. Two decades ago it was more like 75%. During the same time period the state population has increased by perhaps 50%.

In a year or two if trends continue Oregonians will be a minority at their own flagship university.

I expect the same thing is happening in Arizona but I don’t want to bother looking it up. But I would be shocked if the OOS percentage at Arizona and Arizona State has been rising over the decades.

Mainly this isn’t the fault of CA. This is the fault of the UO and the state of Oregon for taking the OOS money instead of properly funding their on in-state university and prioritizing local kids.

“Mainly this isn’t the fault of CA. This is the fault of the UO and the state of Oregon for taking the OOS money instead of properly funding their on in-state university and prioritizing local kids.”

That was my point about the benefit of subsidies for instate kids from OOS fees. The problem is if the school also raises the fees for instate students to an unsustainable level due to a lack of other funding. Colorado is a good example of that.

But I hardly think many Oregon students are being “outcompeted” by those OOS students when the admission rate for UO is over 80% and the admission rate for OSU is similar.

CO instate charges ~$30k per year for Arts & Sciences, nearly half of that is for room and board. What is the price point that you would be comfortable with for an instate flagship?

List price may not be the best indicator, since many students and families need financial aid to afford $30k per year or even $15k per year. Obviously, these are not from the “middle class without financial aid” people most commonly represented on these forums.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2019/10/two-decades-of-change-in-federal-and-state-higher-education-funding figure 10 gives the following net tuition levels (but it includes both in-state and out-of-state):

20258 Vermont
14447 Delaware
13854 Pennsylvania
12254 New Hampshire
12120 Michigan
11206 Colorado

7471 United States overall

5542 Nevada
5536 Arkansas
5209 New York
5018 California
4514 Florida
3950 Wyoming
3651 New Mexico

@ucbalumnus: Even the free-tuition German unis expect you to take care of room and board yourself.

Publics that have good articulation and transfer programs with CC’s take care of much. And there are always online programs. In fact, there are online programs that only take (CC) transfers. Also the cheap University of London distance degrees (less than $10K for a bachelor’s) yet rigorous enough that LSE offers scholarships and admittance to its master’s programs to the best students in the degrees it teaches.

Granted, your choice of majors may be limited (lab sciences pretty much out of the question).

There’s always Germany.

Neither UCR nor UCM offer much of the flagship experience.

So how do you define “the flagship experience”? Sports? Location? Prestige?

I don’t understand the comments that UCR is not difficult to get into. I’m looking at the UC’s data on Admissions by Source School, and it seems that most admits from CA public high schools had upwards of a 3.7-3.8 GPA, with many having over 4.0. I see very few with 3.5 or lower. Merced dips down into the 3.5ish range in some cases, but just scanning the list, it’s still mostly 3.7ish for public schools from CA. It’s not as if you can get Cs and a few Bs and get into these schools. It’s more like As and a few Bs. Certainly, these two UCs are less selective than the others, but the others take mostly kids whose GPAs are far above 4.0. I think it’s fair to say that all the UCs are difficult to get into. They also turn away many highly qualified students who would reasonably be expected to be able to go to a large public university in many other states.

According to https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary , for 2019, UCR’s admission rates by HS GPA were:

18% for 3.00-3.39
52% for 3.40-3.79
87% for 3.80-4.19
97% for 4.20+

(different divisions or majors may have different selectivity compared to the whole campus)

Note that these HS GPAs are the UC-recalculated ones. For students who took at least 8 semesters of UC-accepted honors and AP courses in 10th-11th grade, these HS GPAs are about 0.3 higher than unweighted 10th-11th grade HS GPA. So if looked at in terms of unweighted 10th-11th grade HS GPA, it probably looks like this:

18% for 2.70-3.09
52% for 3.10-3.49
87% for 3.50-3.89
97% for 3.90+

Likely weighted GPA. UCR’s common data set shows that 32% of matriculants had a 4.0, and a 3.83 mean, which doesn’t pass the smell test (as that latter number is not much lower than Cal’s).

Almost all HS GPAs on UC web sites are the weighted-capped version. Unweighted 10th-11th grade HS GPA can be approximated by subtracting 0.3 from the weighted-capped HS GPA.

So the 3.7 HS GPA on a UC web site is probably 3.4 HS GPA when looking at unweighted HS GPA.

But not every kid can qualify for APs and Honors courses at most CA public high schools. So if you’re getting Bs in freshman year (or even middle school in a lot of places, which determines high school placement), you’re not going to be admitted into APs and Honors courses, since they are full of the straight A students. I was under the impression that the GPA boost really only helps A students already (who have access to those classes). The B/B+ with an A here or there student who doesn’t get to take APs is thus further disadvantaged. So I would think that the @ucbalumnus’ lowering of the GPAs for unweighted probably does apply to those in the 4.0 and up category, but not so much to the 3.0-3.5 GPAs. What am I missing here? I don’t fully understand admissions math, but I know that for most of the B/B+ students at large CA publics (who are really, really good students, in many cases), it is a lot easier to get into Oregon and Arizona than UCR. I don’t know what they would actually choose if given the choice, but I’m just saying many of them aren’t given the choice. If the 3.4-3.79 has a 52% chance of getting in, that’s a lot of good students who are not getting into UCR.

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@ccprofandmomof2: That’s fair, though the Cal States also exist.