More college students head out of state

High school graduates are leaving California at nearly double the rate of 20 years ago.

- IRIS KWOK

JAVIER Perez starts his homework on a Metro train as part of his three-hour round-trip daily commute between home and high school.

Photographs by KAYLA BARTKOWSKI Los Angeles Times

Javier Perez, a senior at Benjamin Franklin Senior High School in Highland Park, dreams of studying computer science at Dartmouth College.

"For me, it’s really important to be surrounded by the right people," said Perez, who earlier this year spent two days on the New Hampshire campus during a spring college tour and said he felt a “genuine connection” with the people he met. Plus, he likes cold weather.

He’s hardly alone. A Public Policy Institute of California report released this month found that the share of college-bound California high school graduates enrolling in out-of-state colleges has nearly doubled in the last two decades, rising from 8.5% in 2002 to 14.6% in 2022.

West Coast and Southwest colleges in particular seek out students in population-rich California in their recruitment efforts.

Making the move more enticing is that many public universities participate in a program offering Californians discounted tuition at public colleges in the West.

In 2022, nearly 40,000 California high school grads enrolled in out-of-state colleges, roughly a third of whom flocked to Arizona, Oregon or New York, the researchers found in their analysis of enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2002, the number was closer to 15,000.