California O.K.'s Tuition Hikes

Increases are set for MBA and other professional programs. Plus: Illinois State's dress code revision, the best B-schools for Hispanics, and more

by Alison Damast

Students attending MBA programs in the University of California system will have to swallow hefty tuition increases over the next three academic years that will drive the cost of an MBA, in some cases, to $40,000 a year by 2010-2011.

All of the system's business schools will be impacted, but Berkeley's Haas School of Business will see the sharpest tuition increase, with proposed 15% hikes annually over the next three years that will push yearly tuition in 2010-2011 to $40,882 for California residents and $46,574 for nonresidents.

The initiative is part of a plan approved by the University of California's Board of Regents on Sept. 20 that calls for yearly fee increases over the next three years ranging from 7% to 15% for students in the system's business, law, medical and other professional schools. The additional revenue will help the graduate schools bounce back from budget cuts imposed on them earlier this decade, system officials said.

At Haas, the school plans to primarily use money generated from the increase to recruit and retain top faculty, offer new electives and improve the faculty-to-student ratio, Haas Dean Tom Campbell said in an interview. The fee increase is necessary because Haas is competing with public and private universities that charge students substantially more for their education, he said. For example, according to Campbell, Haas is charging $26,881 in tuition for this academic year, while competitors like Stanford, Penn, Chicago, Columbia, Northwestern, and Harvard are charging on average $46,390. Haas's main competitors in the public university realm—the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia—charge on average $38,870, Campbell said.

"The fundamental point is to try to stay a top-flight business school, and that means having the revenue for both programs and professors," Campbell said. "We have to respond to the market, and the increase in the professional fee will allow us to do that."

Cliff Dank, a second-year Haas student and president of the MBA Association, said he supports the fee increase because he believes it is in the best long-term interest of the school and students. "I don't think applicants will be disincentivized to attend school because the present value of a Haas MBA far outweighs the cost of attending Haas," Dank said. "On the margin, there might be a very small percentage of students who don't want to apply, but if you look at us versus our peers, we're really cheap right now. And we'll still be cheap compared to schools of similar quality in five years."