Paul Sakuma/AP - Students at the University of California at Berkeley walk through Sather Gate. A new tuition plan caps parents’ contribution toward the annual cost of a U.C. Berkeley's student's education at 15 percent of their earnings.
If the state divestment continues, Berkeley’s in-state tuition could reach $22,000 in four years, nearly double the current rate of $12,192.
Berkeley softens the impact on its neediest students with a financial aid pledge that covers tuition and fees for families earning up to $80,000. But until the university announced the middle-class bailout, there was little help for families earning too much for financial aid and too little to afford Berkeley’s soaring fees.
The rising costs of higher education
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In previous generations, a Berkeley education was nearly free; students lingered on campus to savor the contemplative life. Today, in-state tuition, fees and living expenses total $30,000. Students work part time to pay the bills and load up on classes to graduate more swiftly. That imperative has pushed Berkeley’s six-year graduation rate to 91 percent, up from 83 percent a decade ago — a positive tiding, taken alone.
“It adds up to a lot of stress,” said Jackie Chirico, 22, a Berkeley senior. “And it breaks some students.”
Vishalli Loomba, 21, a senior who serves as president of the governance group Associated Students, said she seldom gets her first choice of classes. This semester, Loomba had to settle for a lab section from 7 to 10 p.m. And her family has struggled to keep up with the bills.
“My parents had a plan for how they were going to afford my education,” she said. “That went out the window after the second year.”
Northern California’s public Ivy, like others, is seeking more private funding every year through tuition and donations.
Birgeneau, chancellor since 2004, has thrown open the gates to out-of-state and international students, who pay three times the tuition charged to Californians. In just two years, the share of non-resident freshmen at Berkeley has tripled to 30 percent. The university’s overall non-resident population is 15 percent.
Berkeley now collects about $600 million a year in net tuition revenue, $300 million in private gifts and $700 million in externally funded research.
It’s still not enough to keep Berkeley on pace with its private peers. The university used to match Stanford, Columbia and Harvard on faculty salaries, said John Aubrey Douglass, a Berkeley higher-education scholar. Today, Berkeley pays less, and the gap is widening.
“If those disparities grow greatly,” he said, “then I think Berkeley will be in big trouble.”
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