If you enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley this fall, and you weren’t a California resident, you paid more than you would have if you had gone to Harvard.
That’s not a joke, or a misprint. Berkeley, a public university, now charges its out-of-state attendees more than Harvard does. Choose Harvard instead of Berkeley, and you’ll save enough to buy a top-of-the-line iPad. With a data plan.
“But that’s just out-of-state students!” I hear you cry. “The University of California is a state university, serving the people of the state of California! Out-of-state students should pay more!”
Well, yeah. Fair enough. But in-state tuition at Berkeley is now brushing up against fifteen grand, and even at that price it’s available to fewer and fewer Californians every year. Why? Because those higher-than-Harvard fees are really hard to pass up.
Berkeley’s out-of-state enrollment historically hovered around ten percent. But it rose to 15% two years ago as the current financial crisis hit, then jumped to 23% last year. For the fall of 2011, it skyrocketed to 29.8%. Even with increased enrollment overall, that translates to a loss of more than one thousand places for California residents in just two years.
Education activists talk about “privatization” of higher education a lot, and there’s a danger of that word losing its meaning through repetition. But here it is — privatization in action in the most concrete way. First Berkeley raises its out-of-state pricing to private university levels, and then it starts jacking up out-of-school enrollments to squeeze the most revenue out of its new policy. The public university withers, replaced by something very very different.
And this process is just getting underway. It’s going to get far worse before it gets better.
Update | An eagle-eyed commenter noticed that the webpage I used as my original source for Harvard’s rates omitted two apparently mandatory fees. Once those are taken into account, Harvard’s tuition costs remain slightly higher than Berkeley’s, for now at least. Once you factor in room and board, however, Berkeley takes the lead again — and by a slightly wider margin than I reported in the original version of this post. Full details in comments.
studentactivism.net 
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October 28, 2011 at 5:15 pm
David
You’re comparing total costs at UC Berkeley to tuition-only at Harvard. If you want to compare total costs at Harvard, they’re at . Tuition at Harvard (for a regular, non-visiting student in 2011-2012), is $36,305. At Berkeley, out-of-state tuition is $17,049, and including other fees is $18,669.25. (http://registrar.berkeley.edu/feesched.html)
October 28, 2011 at 5:16 pm
David
(http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/cost.html) URL for Harvard, don’t know why that didn’t post.
October 28, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Vince Slevin (@vslevin)
David, note PER SEMESTER.
2 x $18,669.25 = $37,338.50.
October 29, 2011 at 7:40 am
Angus Johnston
You’re right, David. The link I found for Harvard tuition didn’t include their $1,186 annual Health Services Fee or their $2,360 annual Student Services Fee. Assuming that these fees are both mandatory, they put Harvard’s rack rate at $39,849 — a full 6.7% higher than Berkeley’s out-of-state rates. (As Vince noted above, the figures you quoted for Cal are semesterly.)
It turns out, though, that Harvard’s price advantage disappears if you factor in the cost of dorm living. Room and board at Harvard brings their price up to $50,150.45, while the fees for a standard shared room and the cheapest meal plan at Berkeley will set you back $51,384.50.
In other words, Harvard’s tuition and fees are just barely higher — for now — but if you want to actually attend college Berkeley’s going to cost you a neat $1,234.05 more.
October 29, 2011 at 6:04 pm
ChrisM
The other fact you missed is that the number of enrolled Californians hasn’t gone down. The out of state students are in addition to the same number of California students, not instead of them.
October 30, 2011 at 8:38 am
Angus Johnston
As I noted in the original piece, ChrisM, you’re mistaken. Here are the numbers:
In 2009, 5,620 new first-years filed statements of intent to register at Berkeley. That number rose by just 20 students for 2011. But with the proportion of out-of-state and international students nearly tripling, the number of California residents intending to register plummeted by 1,056 — more than twenty percent.
Click to access frosh_trsirs_table2.2.pdf
Actual enrollment figures are not yet available for 2011, but between 2009 and 2010 in-state Berkeley enrollment fell dramatically. This reflected a similar reduction in in-state admissions, even though the number of in-state applicants rose from year-to-year.
Click to access flowfrc_10.pdf
Turning back to 2011, we see that in-state first-year applications rose by 1,224 between 2009 and 2011, as in-state admissions fell by 1,881. This decline occurred even as overall admits were rising by 580 students.
Click to access fall_2011_applications_table2.2.pdf