Seniors Get Cash Incentive to Graduate

Hoping to make room for a bumper crop of students this fall, UC Berkeley is offering seniors an extra incentive to wrap up their studies this summer: cold, hard cash.

For the first time, UC Berkeley is offering a $500 rebate to seniors who graduate at the end of summer session in August.

“This is a pretty good chunk of change for a Berkeley student,” said Gary Penders, campus director of summer programs. “We had a target of 300 students, and we got 316 applications for the money.”

The fees for summer semester range from $650 to $1,000.

The experimental rebate program is the first of many financial incentives the nine-campus University of California system is exploring to speed up the time it takes students to complete a bachelor’s degree.

At the flagship campus in Berkeley, the average student takes four years and one semester to graduate. The averages are a bit longer at other state universities.

UC officials hope to coax more students to enroll in summer school to speed up their timetable. The idea is that if students move through the system more quickly, they will free up seats for more students to enroll right behind them.

UC campuses are trying to figure out how they will absorb an extra 63,000 students over the next decade. That’s their portion of a tidal wave of students headed toward college as the children of Baby Boomers begin to graduate from high school.

One idea being kicked around by UC officials is to rebate students the cost the entire spring term if they fulfill a contract to graduate within four years.

The fees for one term at the University of California are $1,500 to $2,000, depending on the campus.

The California State University’s 22 campuses and the state’s 106 community colleges are exploring the idea of turning their campuses into year-round operations to absorb their portion of the tidal wave. The latest forecast suggests that a total of 714,000 extra California students will enroll by 2010.

Although many campuses have room to grow, places like Berkeley, with 31,347 undergraduate and graduate students, are bulging at capacity. Classes are oversubscribed. Dorms are perennially packed. Off-campus housing is at a premium.

Still, the university hopes somehow to accommodate an extra 4,000 students--to do its part. “The plan, at this point, is that summer can absorb about 1,600 of them,” Penders said.

Yet boosting summer school enrollment has been problematic, given how summer break is cherished by students and professors alike. Students often need to work, travel or just have some fun. Professors need the time to write or do research.

For now, about 40% of the students from the regular academic year at Berkeley take summer classes.

Berkeley officials don’t know yet how many of the students who lined up for the $500 rebate were induced to graduate sooner and how many will simply reap a windfall for preexisting plans.

For Teresa Rodriguez, it was enough to accelerate her plans.

“I didn’t know I could graduate in summer,” said Rodriguez, a senior in physical anthropology. “Finding that out was great news. And then they put you on a list to give you this money. It was a big incentive, because I need the money.”

She plans to use the $500 to visit graduate schools in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Albuquerque.