Defending the numbers...

I do know that some people hate what I write with enough passion to waste an incredible amount of time in an attempt to disprove everything I say.

Take for example, this little rant about my tuition article:

Does somebody actually FACT CHECK LaHue's stories? First, he uses a biased pseudo-site to confirm his beliefs that PETA is bad. Next, he prints completely inaccurate tuition costs and odd math - how is $182 8% of $3,340? Even if you subtract the $182 from $3,340 and redo the math, it's still wrong. Check Princeton Review, you know, the people who post information about colleges? According to their, ahem, sources from the actual universities, LaHue is off by more than $2,000 on some, almost $4000 on others (year of U Texas at Austin - $6,786 compared to his inaccurate $8,860, U Wisconsin at Madison - $9,048 compared to $5,140). He fails to include out-of-state students' cost in his article as well - an 8% increase is a big deal when they pay $9,500 a year compared to other Chico State students' $3,200 (as reported by Princeton Review). Also, these universities are not comparable to Chico in selectivity or SAT scores. Come on, award-winners, CHECK THE FACTS BEFORE YOU PRINT THEM!!!!

Well, I think it's fair, in the interest of defending my credibility to explain my resources.

1) The exact amount of CSU fee increases- That information came from a press release from the Chancellor's office. The exact snippit states:

The annual State University Fee for resident undergraduates, and for students in CSU’s teacher credential programs will increase by 8 percent, or $186 and $215, respectively. Fees for graduate students will increase by 10 percent or $282.

I eliminated teaching credential fees in the article for space reasons. Also, there was a typo that didn't get caught--the $182 should have been $186.

2) Okay, so how did I come up with $3,340? Well, here's the thing- what you pay for classes is called tution and fees. The CSU increases deal with just tuition. This webpage on the CSU Chico Schedule site can explain this in detail.

Here's how it breaks down: This year, Chico State students will pay $1,577 in total tuition and fees each semester. But the CSU system is only responsible for $1,167 of those fees. Where is the remaining $410 coming from? Either from Chico State itself, or the Associated Students. Those are the various fees like the Student Union Fee, the Activity Fee, Health Services Fee, etc.

Those various fees are different throughout the CSU system, so each campus costs a different amount to attend. For example, Chico is less expensive than Cal Poly-SLO, but more expensive than Long Beach State.

The 8 percent increase will just be in $1,167 charged by the CSU each semester, because that's all they have authority over. Do the math from that: an 8 percent increase from $1,167 is $1260 (rounded off), a difference of $93 each semester. Mutiply that by two, and it comes out to $186.

To get $3,340, take the cost of all the tutition and fees this year at Chico State ($1,577 each semester x 2 semesters =$3,154) and add in that $186 increase to get $3,340.

4) Maybe the most crucial thing here: Where did I get my numbers for the other three universities. The Princeton Review was an option--but I felt in this situation, it would be better to not go with a third party source. Also, finding information on schools isn't PR's primary service- they're a company that sells test prep materials. That's their main business.

And probably the worst thing is, they're not citing where they got their information. How can I rely on that? It would be a bad move.

Instead, I opted to scan the website of the actual universities to see what they had to say. Besides, relying on one site for all my information would be sort of lazy, and if there's one thing I don't want to be, it's a lazy journalist.

The downside: a couple of these were from last year. But offsetting that with this being direct information from the university, I still considered that the best option.

University of Wisconsion-Madison Undergraduate Admissions
University of Connecticut Financial Aid website
University of Texas-Austin (I was actually refered to this page by a friend who actually attends UT! I also did a search from scratch in later days to confirm the validity of the information.)

So, there's my research. I hope this clears up any confusion...