Just curious, what is the difference between a public and private institute? Majority of the colleges I’ve been interested in recently, I’ve noticed they are private. Other than the obvious tuition amounts, are there any other major differences?
Public colleges are government agencies that are partially funded by state taxpayer money. The schools exist as a public service to benefit state residents (i.e. voters). Accordingly, the public colleges generally charge a lower tuition price to state residents. The employees (professors, administrators, coaches, etc) are typically classified as state government employees. The operations of the public university have to comply w rules & regulations for state government enterprises.
An example of the implications of this is seen in CA. It is illegal in CA to consider race in state government business (Proposition 209); therefore, CA public universities must have race-blind admissions. Stanford, being a PRIVATE university is not subject to that law. Consequently, the racial make-up of the student body at Stanford ends up being very different than that of race-blind Berkeley.