Today's Daily Cal presented a newly proposed policy that would make undergraduate students pay out-of-state tuition when taking more than 10% of the minimum number of units to graduate.

http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=15205

In order to analyze this policy, let?s look at its prospective benefits.

1) UC (Berkeley or system?) will save $9 million. A pretty small amount, especially considering the size of the system-wide cuts we are facing. Is it worth the effort?
2) Less 5th and 6th-year students. It would encourage people to leave the system sooner, though to their defense, many students in their fifth and sixth years have extraneous circumstances leading to their situations.

Now, let's look at the problems with the program:

1) This program will affect more students than anticipated. Transfer students, students with lots of AP credit, double majors, late declarers, and others will be hit hard by the constraints of this policy. Student leaders and faculty across the UC system already object to the idea. Even lower income student could be heavily affected by the policy, as they are often the students that take the most units in the shortest time to get their programs done quickly.
2) Students won't be able to maximize their experience at Berkeley. If students are worried about a unit cap in addition to everything else, their ambitions for major choices are going to be altered and lowered (especially since some require more units than others? I'm looking at you, Political Science).

The situation is pretty simple, folks. This policy is crap. Any gain from it would be completely outweighed by the costs it would have on the academic value of our education and the sanity of the student body. Hopefully enough people come to their senses before they take implementation to the next step.

An interesting possible alternative would be to make all 6th-year students pay out-of-state tuition, regardless of how many units they've taken. Tack on extra tuition to students that are already paying out-of-state tuition. It might clear some of the super-super senior ranks, and save a little bit of cash.

BTW happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Note: this is NOT Mexican Independence Day.
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