This fall, as crazy as it sounds, it will be more expensiveto live on campus at UC Riverside than at UCLA, andpricier to bunk in the dorms at UC Merced in the Central Valley than atUC San Diego in tony La Jolla.
CSU Fullertonwill charge $2,500 more than Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.And while it’s no shock that room-and-board at UC Berkeley will cost more than any other public universityin the Golden State, the second-most expensive schoolfor housing is hardly a household name — or located in a hot rental market: It’s CSU Channel Islands in the Ventura County town of Camarillo.
A new analysis of university room-and-board costs by this newsorganization shows the price of living on campus is often out-of-whack with local housing costs and is becoming one of the prime factors in the runaway cost of attending a four-year college.
“That is really surprising,” said Christopher Palmer, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who studies housing markets andproveseven with a PhD in economics, it’s tough figuring out howCalifornia’s universities calculate housing costs.
Universities are under intense pressure to hold the line on tuition hikes, and the tuition increases set to hit both University of California and California State University students this fall have been widely debated. Butroom-and-board costs receive far less scrutiny.
Yet in thelast 10 years, housing costs at UC campuses have jumpedsome 30 percent, making it increasingly difficult for some low-income students to earn a degree. “It’s impacting students’ and families’ ability to pay for college,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who has backed several proposals in Sacramento recently aimed at helping students pay not only for tuition, but housing and dining costs, during college.
One of the most puzzling things about housing costs is how some universities have become so out-of-synccompared to the local market.UC Merced, the system’s least popularschool, has the biggest gap between on-campus and off-campus living costs: nearly $8,000. It costs nearly twice as much to live on campus as it does to rent an apartment nearby.
While UC tuition is the same across the system, each campus sets its own prices for everything else from housing to printing costs, which means that a UC diploma can have a variety of price tags.
Officials at UC Merced say that as the schoolhas grown, it’s had to add new buildings and services for students living on campus. “So while the off-campus market fluctuates based on the local real estate market, on-campus rates are driven more by the cost to maintain and expand the programs offered to support our students,” said Brenda Ortiz, a spokeswoman for the campus.
Colleges also calculate average room-and-board costs slightly differently, and students can choose from severalliving and dining plans.
Still, the numbers underscore a persistent and growing problem: Unpredictable and rising living expenses are pricing some students out of higher education.
Systemwide, the average cost of living on campus next year will be $15,396, up about 6 percent from $14,520 this year, according to preliminary figures.
Berkeley’s on-campus living costs are set to be higher than any of other four-year public university in the state: $17,549, up more than $1,000 from $16,389.
Zach Gamlieli is one semester from a Cal diploma. But if it weren’t for Casa Zimbabwe, the off-campus student cooperative where he pays about $7,000 to live, the Los Angeles native would have a much different story. “It’s kept me in school,” he said. “I was probably going to have to leave school and go back to work.”
Rising housing costs are also plaguing Santa Cruz students. At $16,055 next year, on-campus living costs will be the fourth highest after Berkeley, CSU Channel Islands and Davis, and nearly a thousand dollars more than this year.
But students do it because, in a beach town that seems to care more about attractingtourists than helping young people earn a degree, “it is really difficult to find housing off-campus,” said Judith Gutierrez, a member of the Santa Cruz Student Union Assembly. This year, more than half of Santa Cruz’s students lived on campus compared to less than a quarter of Davis students.
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Sometimes, it’s required. Most of the UCs and CSUs don’t mandate that students live in the dorms but at San Jose State, freshmen from more than 30 miles away have to live on campus as part of an attempt to boost retention and graduation rates. Studies show that students who live on campus are more engaged in campus life and do better in school. At San Jose State, that will cost more than $15,500 next year.
Hoping to ease the impact, lawmakers in Sacramento introduced a budget proposal in March to cover more living costs for the state’s college students.
“Research shows more and more that students are graduating with all this debt not because of high tuition,” said Assemblyman McCarty, one of the key backers of the plan.“The reality is these huge debt loads are driven by non-tuition costs.”
