Tuition break is nearly erased at Cal
Law, business schools raise in-state prices
Californians seeking professional degrees have for years enjoyed big tuition discounts to attend the public law and business schools at UC Berkeley. But that benefit is nearly gone, because the university has raised prices for state residents at a rate faster than for students from out of state, a Chronicle analysis has found.
University records also show that the number of Californians at the prestigious UC Berkeley Law School and Haas School of Business has fallen sharply over the last decade, while out-of-state enrollments have
soared.
The disappearing in-state tuition break and the rise in nonresident enrollment raise questions about whether the University of California is treating California students fairly. Many say the university is wrong to charge Californians, who pay taxes that support UC and its professional schools, nearly as much as out-of-state students.
Price doubles
Tuition and mandatory fees more than doubled for California residents at Berkeley Law and at Haas since fall 2005. Then, the annual price for both was about $24,000. Now it’s more than $52,000 a year for the law school and nearly $58,000 for Haas, The Chronicle’s analysis shows.
Prices for out-of-state students rose by far less: 54 percent at the law school and 67 percent at the business school, to about $56,000 for law students and nearly $60,000 for those at Haas.
The result? State residents now pay nearly the same for the coveted public programs as do students from other states and countries. The price difference at Haas is 3 percent, and at Berkeley Law it’s 7 percent. A decade ago, it was 32 percent at Haas and 33 percent at Berkeley Law.
The Chronicle studied 10 years of tuition and fee data at three other UC Berkeley professional schools: Optometry, Public Health and the Goldman School of Public Policy. The discount for California residents decreased at all of them by an average of 17 percentage points. But none lost as much as at Haas, where the state residents’ discount fell by 29 percentage points, and at Berkeley Law, where it fell by 26 points. The data came from the UC Berkeley Office of the Registrar.
Cost nears private schools’
Lande Ajose, executive director of California Competes, a higher education think tank in Berkeley, said UC officials are raising in-state prices on professional-degree programs “because they can.”
The changes have gone largely unnoticed as public debate has raged around undergraduate tuition and UC’s efforts to enroll more undergraduates from out of state. California undergraduates still get a hefty discount, paying $16,371 a year at UC Berkeley, compared with $41,079 for out-of-state students.
In-state annual tuition and fees for a student starting full time at Berkeley Law and at Haas now approach the annual tuition charged by some top private programs, including Stanford Law and Cornell’s Johnson Business School.
More out-of-state students
Only half as many California residents signed up for the full-time MBA program at the Haas business school in fall 2015 compared with 10 years earlier: 48 students, down from 98. Overall, three times as many out-of-state students as residents are enrolled full time at Haas.
At the law school, new enrollments of California residents are down 24 percent since 2005: from 201 to 153. Overall, out-of-state enrollments have more than doubled since then: from 127 to 336.
“I think it’s outrageous,” said Paul Monge, 26, a first-year student at the School of Law who serves on the UC Student Association’s budget committee. “The UC system has a special obligation to ensure access to California residents, who are products of our public schools and who are committed to contributing to California’s workforce.”
He said in-state students deserve the discounts because they already support the public university through taxes. When tuition and fees are added to that, Californians “pay several times into their education,” he said, and called the loss of the benefit “disorienting.”
Monge has seven younger brothers and sisters in San Francisco who also hope to go to UC and, potentially, get a law degree or an MBA from the public university. Their father, a carpenter, is out of work on disability. Their mother works in human resources.
“I have a personal stake in making sure that my younger siblings can access the same quality of education,” Monge said.
But Berkeley Law and Haas officials say California’s 9 percent cut in support for UC since 2007 gave them no choice but to eliminate most of the price break that state residents long enjoyed.
“In previous decades, the state heavily subsidized the cost of an education for California’s public university students — thus, California students were able to pay substantially less than out-of-state students who weren’t subsidized,” said Susan Gluss, spokeswoman for Berkeley Law.
Seeking to maintain quality
At Haas, Assistant Dean Stephanie Fujii said the business school’s first priority was to maintain quality.
“When California provided more support to us, allowing tuition and fees to be lower, that was a wonderful benefit. But we couldn’t lower the level of service,” Fujii said.
She and Gluss said both schools offer financial assistance and loan-repayment help to students.
Cal’s law and business schools increasingly see their applicant pools as nationwide and international, they said. But each pointed to ways California residents are still being served by the programs: The Haas School’s three-year “Evening and Weekend” MBA program is still 85 percent California residents. And this year, more than twice as many Californians as nonresidents transferred in to Berkeley Law from other law schools.
Sharp rise in price
But for full-time students at those professional schools, tuition and fees have risen sharply.
The UC Board of Regents has approved such increases so the professional schools could stay afloat without competing with the undergraduate program for state dollars, said Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president of Long Beach City College. Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the board in 2014.
He expressed surprise at the drop-off in Californians entering as first-year students at the law and business schools.
“This is something we’re very concerned about,” Oakley said. “A lot of us feel the prices have gotten beyond the reach of Californians. So it will definitely be a topic of greater discussion for all the regents.”
Loan debt
Monge, the law student, says most of his classmates are too busy with school and other obligations — like figuring out how to pay the bills — to protest tuition increases.
“I treat applying for scholarships as a job,” he said.
Doing otherwise can be financially perilous: The average student loan debt for Berkeley Law graduates in 2014 was $143,546, according to U.S. News and World Report. Some graduates will go on to earn high salaries at law firms, but not every student is interested in the kind of practice that pays big money.
“I’m committed to pursuing a public-interest law career,” Monge said.
As tuition rises, students like him find it harder to go into that kind of law, he said. “They’re forced to work in the private sector to pay back their debt.”