Last year, Cal Lutheran established special scholarships, regardless of family income, for students who were also admitted to UCLA or UC Santa Barbara. The grants make the cost of attending the private school the same as attending UC, including room and board.
Last year 20 students took Cal Lutheran's offer, and this fall 27 did, receiving annual aid worth $17,000 on average, according to Rebecca Keenan, the university's associate director of financial aid and scholarships. And for next fall, the campus plans to expand the scholarship offer to those accepted at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
Cal Lutheran, which enrolls about 3,700 students, benefits by attracting academically strong students who might have gone elsewhere. "We thought about the fact that, with UC cutting enrollment, options for students were getting to be smaller. This makes us an affordable option for more families," Keenan said.
That worked for sophomore Rodriguez. He was unhappy with what he viewed as the crowded, anonymous style of a UCLA reception for admitted applicants. "It felt like a cattle call," he recalled, adding that it underlined his concerns about the state budget cuts.
So he signed up for Cal Lutheran's new financial aid offer.
His mother, Angel Zobel-Rodriguez, said she urges other families to consider the program. "This is a way that changes the dynamic for people who might not look at private schools," she said. "It doesn't mean they are necessarily going to go there. There will always be some parents who want that brand name of UCLA."
The University of San Francisco is taking a different tack. The private Catholic school recently announced that it will offer half-price tuition on lower-division courses at its satellite campuses in San Ramon, Cupertino, Sacramento and Santa Rosa. Advertisements say the program, starting in January, can help "students trapped by the devastating cuts at California's public universities and give them the classes they need to graduate."
The courses, in such subjects as psychology, statistics, U.S. history and Spanish, will count toward a public campus degree, University of San Francisco officials said. But they said it is too soon to estimate enrollment demand, particularly given that tuition, even reduced by 55%, will be $560 a credit, compared to $26 a unit at community colleges.
