Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 95 posts

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#81

Post by handedness »

laurencerowe wrote: post #76
handedness wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UC system spends $120K/year per student, roughly 10x the tuition and fees a California resident will pay to attend. The UC system also has an absurdly high ratio of administrative staff to academic staff, and administrative staff to undergraduates. It has become something of a jobs program for the state of California, and is the third-largest employer of a state that is the 6th-largest economy in the world. Somet…

I don't know where your $120K/year per student figure comes from, but it seems highly misleading. The most recent figures I could find (AY 2012-2013) put the cost at $16,890. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-educational-e... Research focussed universities like UC do of course spend a lot more on research, but those activities have their own dedicated funding streams, mostly Federal grants.

That core fund report seems to be missing something, as if the total total per-student cost were $16,890, the vast majority of that would be covered by the current $12.3K annual tuition (to say nothing of +$27K from out-of-state students). The UC system would therefore be unlikely to have the underfunded pension problem they currently face, for example.

Their annual budget is pushing $30B, and their student population–expensive post-graduates included–clocks in at around a quarter million.

Those numbers have changed from year to year, but last I checked, their total expenditures came out to around $120K/student. Texas A&M by comparison is around $90K/student, with Harvard pushing $200K (their tuition is 5x what the UC system's is, for comparison).

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#82

Post by wutbrodo »

Paul-ish wrote: post #69
yaacov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because nonresident admissions don't reduce the absolute number of Californians the system can support! They pay much more in tuition than the UC spends on their education, and much of the remainder gets spent on in-state residents. In-state admissions have fallen at highly competitive schools like UCLA not because out-of-state students are taking up more of a set number of spots, but because the amount of in-…

>Declining admit rates of in-state students is a problem, but out-of-state students are part of the solution. I really, really hope this proposal doesn't get passed. The same thing was happening at my state school when I was there. Out of state students seem like a bad solution. Are we going to end up in a system where everyone has to go "out of state" because their in state school is under funded? It is like a perve…

Well, _everybody_ can't, because the in-state students being displaced are those who can't afford in-state tuition (let alone the far, far higher out-of-state tuition).

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#83

Post by wutbrodo »

CalChris wrote: post #74
Daishiman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education policy is driven by politics. Saying that it's apolitical is just ignoring that aspect of reality.

Going further, government is controlled by politics and we are talking about a government institution.

Right; it's particularly stupid to say that politics (and hence gov't) has no role in an institution that exists as a governmental entity.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#84

Post by ben_jones »

vmarsy wrote: post #59

> Her own child was turned down by her top three UC choices two years ago, despite SAT scores and a grade point average above the 90th percentile. Her daughter ended up at a fourth UC campus. Why not simply follows Texas' Top 10% Rule [1] ? > The law guarantees Texas students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class automatic admission to all state-funded universities This top 10% rule, (in con…

It also would give an unfair advantage to students of means who can afford tutors to write admissions essays, do there homework, or SAT prep programs that drill test taking strategies and rote memorization of common answers. Maybe it would be better still, when I was in school I just saw too much of this.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#85

Post by dukeluke »

ben_jones wrote: post #84
vmarsy wrote: post #59

> Her own child was turned down by her top three UC choices two years ago, despite SAT scores and a grade point average above the 90th percentile. Her daughter ended up at a fourth UC campus. Why not simply follows Texas' Top 10% Rule [1] ? > The law guarantees Texas students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class automatic admission to all state-funded universities This top 10% rule, (in con…

It also would give an unfair advantage to students of means who can afford tutors to write admissions essays, do there homework, or SAT prep programs that drill test taking strategies and rote memorization of common answers. Maybe it would be better still, when I was in school I just saw too much of this.

Those students already have an unfair advantage.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#86

Post by canttestthis »

handedness wrote: post #81
laurencerowe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where your $120K/year per student figure comes from, but it seems highly misleading. The most recent figures I could find (AY 2012-2013) put the cost at $16,890. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-educational-e... Research focussed universities like UC do of course spend a lot more on research, but those activities have their own dedicated funding streams, mostly Federal grants.

That core fund report seems to be missing something, as if the total total per-student cost were $16,890, the vast majority of that would be covered by the current $12.3K annual tuition (to say nothing of +$27K from out-of-state students). The UC system would therefore be unlikely to have the underfunded pension problem they currently face, for example. Their annual budget is pushing $30B, and their student populatio…

Your calculations are oversimplified. The real cost to a student should be around $20k.

Does the $30B per year not cover the funding for the UC medical centers, museums, athletic programs, etc.? The amount of money actually spent on students (through faculty salaries, financial aid, lab equipment, etc) is closer to $7B. Also you need to remove grad students from the calculation entirely, they disproportionately affect the numbers and they don't have out of state cap. Once you take all those factors into account you get ~$20k.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#87

Post by literallycancer »

dvt wrote: post #77
stale2002 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it basically screws California taxpayers" It does literally the opposite. Out of state people are a net money gain, not a net money loss. The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept.

> The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept. Except that classes are overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded[1]. There might be a balance, but we're not there yet.. and what we're doing isn't working. [1] https://theaggie.org/2016/10/12/ucs-overcrowded-and-underfun...

As in the classes are overcrowded? Insufficient housing capacity isn't such a big problem, even though it surprised me to see that putting 3 people into 1 room is still a thing in the US.

At UCLA, triple occupancy rooms now account for 73 percent of all student housing, and the Westwood campus is quickly running out of room for expansion. Because of the lack of student housing at UC Berkeley, some students are being housed at Mills College in Oakland — a 25-minute shuttle ride away.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#88

Post by zodiac »

__derek__ wrote: post #73
stale2002 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it basically screws California taxpayers" It does literally the opposite. Out of state people are a net money gain, not a net money loss. The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept.

Maybe. There is some upper-limit to the number of students the system can admit. Enrolling out-of-state students is a net gain if the they stay in California and are productive enough to outweigh the productivity of the in-state students they push out and the potentially lost productivity from those students' going to non-UC schools.

How do out of state students "push out" in state students?

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#89

Post by reneherse »

yaacov wrote: post #52
reneherse wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Absent additional state funding (lol), an enrollment cap would necessarily result in tuition increases. I really really hope it doesn't get passed. Or, how about the UC system reduces spending per student?

They already spend less than most comparably-ranked universities. If you take a look at the link I posted on the top-level comment, you'll see that expenses per student have been increasing pretty slowly. Of course, waste should still be cut if it exists. Are there any specific programs that you think should have their funding reduced?

No expert, just a former student with a sense of fairness and disgust for waste. But I would hope to see:

-Cuts in administration size and salaries.

-Cuts in facility expenditures; figure out a way to do more with less.

-An increase in the number of full time faculty.

-An increase in faculty and graduate instructor compensation.

Re: UC proposes its first enrollment cap on out-of-state students

#90

Post by stale2002 »

dvt wrote: post #77
stale2002 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it basically screws California taxpayers" It does literally the opposite. Out of state people are a net money gain, not a net money loss. The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept.

> The more out of state people you can, the more instate people you can afford to accept. Except that classes are overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded[1]. There might be a balance, but we're not there yet.. and what we're doing isn't working. [1] https://theaggie.org/2016/10/12/ucs-overcrowded-and-underfun...

Correct. And removing the out of staters would make the classes more underfunded, and more understaffed, because they have less money.
Post reply on HN