By snoadmin
For most Californians, the idea of leaving California to go to school is out of the question. People who grow up here learn to love it and often never leave. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of our schools are overcrowded.
The current budget crisis and the overcrowding of school means it is harder to get into college as a Californian, and once you do get into school you have to pay more for less classes.
For some, this has led to other alternatives, and those alternatives are starting to look more and more appealing.
The Western Undergraduate Exchange is a little-known program that helps students pay for school if they choose to go to another state.
Out-of-state tuition is usually very expensive at around $20,000 a year, but the Western Undergraduate Exchange makes it so students pay around $12,000.
This may seem like a lot at almost twice as much as a CSU school, but it also means graduating in four years without losing any classes or dealing with continuous fee increases.
For people who want a quick and uninterrupted education, this decision makes sense. In California, it is getting increasingly harder to get the classes you want and graduate on time.
Some students have to go an extra semester just to take a couple more classes so they can graduate. As people grow more frustrated with how things are going in California, we are going to see more and more of them jumping ship.
This is good for those of us who stayed in the state too. California does not offer the same deal to other states, meaning we are exporting more students than we receive.
This means the system could start to unclog some of the overly impacted universities that have become nearly impossible to get into, even for the best students.
If the local schools become less impacted, it will make it easier for California residents to get into their own schools. Gaining admission to local universities has become an increasing problem during these troubling economic times. Every year it becomes more difficult to gain admission to Cal State Long Beach.
California does not participate in this deal for other states because we have been pushing for out-of-state students specifically to get the extra money that comes from the drastically higher tuition.
More out-of-state students in California universities mean more money, which we desperately need. Other states do not have this problem. In fact they are offering this plan because they need more students to fill open spaces.
This seems like a drastic solution to the problem, but students are beginning to run out of options. It makes more sense that students who cannot get into a good school in their own home state would rather go to a good school in another state instead of settling for their third or fourth choice in California.
Plus, the extra money isn’t so bad when you realize that some students are spending five or six years to graduate in California schools. For people who want to get a head start on their careers, a little extra money is worth it for the short four-year graduation time.
