<p>My son was accepted at Berkeley in 2007, and I figured it was going to cost us more than $50,000/year if he went there, which was $6-7,000 more than anywhere else at the time. I think $56,000 is a lowball figure.</p>
<p>^ With 2-person dorms and a full meal plan, sure.</p>
<p>If choosing the co-ops, you can scrounge by for much less.</p>
<p>Non resident tuition is 35,700.</p>
<p>I apologize for mistaking the OOS tuition. I was unaware that OOS students had to pay both “normal” tuition and “supplemental” tuition. That being said, you can qualify for In-state tuition after one year. The COL drops dramatically if one lives off campus with roomates so I still feel as though the averge cost for OOS is around 40K a year. </p>
<p>Tuition alone at Stanford runs at about $43,000. It’s actually $60,000 + per year overall. Over $200,000 for a UG degree. Most people at Cal aren’t paying anywhere close to that amount. That’s really the only point I was originally making. If someone opts for OOS at Cal, that’s on them and their family and I hope that they can afford to do so. If they cannot, they are crazy! No doubt about it. </p>
<p>I’ll rephrase my comment. You’re crazy if you pay over 50K a year for UG at ANY school and cannot afford to do so! It just so happens that most are paying 200K for UG at the private colleges, where grade inflation is rampant.</p>
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<p>Not so fast. It’s very difficult for OOS students to establish in-state tuition residency by moving to California solely for the purpose of attending college. Most states are on to that tactic throw up roadblocks to make it difficult or impossible:</p>
<p>[Establishing</a> Legal Residence - Office Of The Registrar](<a href=“http://registrar.berkeley.edu/establish.html]Establishing”>http://registrar.berkeley.edu/establish.html)</p>
<p>Excerpts:</p>
<p>"If you are physically present in California solely for educational purposes, you will not be eligible for resident classification regardless of the length of your stay in California.</p>
<p>Financial Independence: If you will not reach age 24 by December 31 of the year in which classification as a resident is requested, and are not dependent upon a California resident parent (biological or legally adoptive only) for tuition purposes, you will be required to satisfy the University’s self-sufficiency requirement.</p>
<p>It should be noted that this requirement makes it extremely difficult for most undergraduates who do not have a parent domiciled in California to qualify for classification as a resident at a University of California campus."</p>
<p>Yeah. While it’s easy for most grad students to get the in-state CA rate because you become self sufficient once you’re on a stipend (changing your state residency to CA within the first few months of attending was actually a requirement at a UC I was accepted).</p>
<p>Re honors programs:
Also think about whether you are comfortable about being a student with special privileges within a bigger school. My younger son really did not like that aspect at all - especially the idea of honors dorms that separate you from the hoi polloi. I know that choosing to go to a selective university is another kind of sorting, but it didn’t feel as in your face to him. </p>
<p>I’ve got mixed feelings about honors programs. Obviously for those who need to consider finances they are a great opportunity to get a better more intimate education. Or at least they should be.</p>
<p>It’s not the end of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>I think it’s the end if the Average League.</p>
<p>A college degree is rapidly losing its value. A college degree gets you a job in Starbucks and has for the last 5 years. I see so many college kids struggling. They can barely find teacher jobs anymore which used to hire so reliably.</p>
<p>Of course, there is a shortage of really skilled engineers, mathematicians, etc. in the hard sciences and math programs but so many majors are useless. Too many majors are failing students in their quests to find work in particular fields. The economy is morphing into something else and colleges are doing the same old stuff. It’s got to change and catch up. </p>
<p>Average students that get their advice from parents/counselors using 20 year old knowledge and studying in colleges that haven’t changed focus in 20 years and still offering same programs from 20 years ago are only preparing kids for work that existed 20 years ago but not for today.</p>
<p>I’ve been hiring for large corporations for 30 years and I don’t know of a single major I’d describe as useless. I can describe tens of thousands of kids who did not take advantage of the educational opportunities they had- I can describe dozens of colleges where a kid can graduate with a respectable GPA without ever having had to stretch intellectually- I can describe thousands of kids with allegedly “useful” majors who my hiring teams rejected early on because believe it or not- you can get a degree in math or accounting or engineering and still not have marketable skills when you graduate (the ability to learn independently, the ability to analyze a set of facts and think critically about them, the ability to write a coherent email and to use standard English, LOL).</p>
<p>@Blossom</p>
<p>Useless degree was possibly an extreme term. </p>
<p>I think a liberal arts education is ideal for creating well-educated, creative and intelligent thinkers. I think that some majors are too narrowly focused on teaching to specific jobs and that colleges will continue to crank out grads with these narrowly focused majors for years after the demand for them has dried up.</p>
<p>On the other side, I think that far too many employers are demanding applicants have college degrees than is really needed to do the job ruling out equally skilled and qualified albeit untested high school graduates.</p>
<p>So, to be more clear, a useless degree, in my opinion, is one narrowly focused on specific fields of employment that are no longer in high demand and not generally transferable or desirable to other fields of employment.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I would be the type to hire artists, philosophy majors and liberal arts majors and history majors for sales, marketing, management, etc. and number crunchers to do number crunching and engineers to engineer.</p>