Want to get out of Colorado?

Max Hand, staff writer|January 30, 2018

The Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) is a program for certain states that offer an in-state tuition or discounted rate for students who live in the participating states. Colorado is one of the 16 states that participate in WUE.

 

Students looking for a school in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, or Wyoming, should check and make sure it applies to the WUE, because not every school participates.

 

A common misconception is that if students are part of the WUE they get in-state tuition, but that isn’t always true. A WUE school offers in-state plus 50% as the discount. Essentially students are paying 50% more than an in-state student would, but not as much as someone from outside the 16 states would.

 

Students who are not sure if they can apply to the WUE can consult  https://www.wiche.edu/wue. This will show students what majors are available and what states are available for that major.  It will also show all of the options available with the

WUE.

 

For example, if a student wants to go to CSU for journalism, but is also thinking about somewhere out of state, like the University of New Mexico, in-state tuition is $5,286 in New Mexico. If a Colorado student wanted to study journalism it would be $7,929 in New Mexico. This is a steal seeing that out of state tuition with no WUE for New Mexico is $20,549. This is a total of $12,620 savings. Whereas, if that same student stayed in Colorado and attended CSU, the cost would be $10,966. Going out of state would actually be cheaper in this case.

 

If a Colorado student wanted to go to California State University East Bay for a business degree it would cost $8,208 with the WUE compared to $16,632 without–a savings of $8,424. The same student would pay $10,966 at CSU.

 

Many students are under the impression that going out of state is much more expensive, however, with the WUE, out of state colleges may be affordable. Students should definitely see if they qualify.