Cal Poly in Top 100 List for Affordability, Excellence
Kiplinger ranked the campus 91st in its annual list of the top 100 public colleges and universities.
Cal Poly Pomona has been named to a list of schools ranked for offering students more bang for their college buck.
Kiplinger ranked the campus 91st in its annual list of the top 100 public colleges and universities that combine excellence and affordability.
“Given these hard times in higher ed, the word value takes on special resonance,” said the editors at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine in explaining their rankings system, which includes graduation rates, cost and student debt loads.
The top 100 were selected from a pool of more than 500 colleges and universities nationwide.
University President Michael Ortiz credits the faculty and staff for the ranking.
“This recognition is a direct reflection of our faculty and staff, who are constantly providing our students with a premier educational experience,” Ortiz said in a statement. “Budget cuts have impacted every aspect of campus life, including our ability to appropriately reward these people. But these individuals have risen to the challenge so our students remain among the best prepared graduates.”
The total annual in-state cost for attending Cal Poly is listed at $18,981, including tuition, fees, housing and other costs. Tuition alone is $5,472 total this year for fall, winter and spring quarters. The state has slashed funding to the CSU system by $650 million. CSU campuses could see another $200 million in cuts, Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday, if some proposed tax increases he plans to put on the ballot don’t get voter approval.
As a result of the cuts to education funding, the CSU Board of Trustees approved a 9 percent tuition fee hike in November for the 2012-13 school year. The increase would be on top of a 12 percent tuition hike that took effect this school year, and a 9 percent increase that was imposed in 2010.
Ortiz said at a conference on campus in September that the faculty's and staff's willingness to take on a greater workload has helped the unversity keep costs down and quality up.
Cal Poly wasn’t the only campus to make the cut. San Diego State (77th), Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (83rd), and Cal State Long Beach (98th) also made the list.
UC Berkeley was ranked seventh, the highest of eight University of California campuses that made the top 100. The University of North Carolina topped the list this year, followed by the University of Florida and the University of Virginia.
The annual public school rankings will appear in Kiplinger's February 2012 issue.
