By LAUREL ROSENHALL, Sacramento Bee

Students applying to college this fall have a new tool to help them compare costs at various campuses. This month, so-called "net price calculators" will appear on the websites of colleges nationwide, giving students and parents an idea of how much financial aid they could receive months before a formal offer arrives.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Students at California's public colleges and universities should brace for more tuition increases under the new state budget deal.

He calls it the UnCollege movement.

Nineteen-year-old Dale Stephens is urging his peers to rethink the need for college, arguing that they can get more out of pursuing real-world skills than completing homework assignments and studying for exams.

Thousands of students logged on to their computers Thursday to find out whether they got into the University of California, Berkeley. Most were disappointed -- even many with straight A's and enviable test scores.

In this era of online dating and computerized banking, the University of California is rolling back the clock -- encouraging its campuses to have people, not computers, read applications from the tens of thousands of students who try each year to get in.

When Elizabeth Walz successfully ran for student government last year, she built her campaign around an issue she knew would resonate with her peers at the University of California, Davis: textbook costs.

For days, she polled students on their textbook-buying habits.

A picture of an oiled bird is taped to the wall above Charlie Anderson's desk inside a University of California, Berkeley lab. The cormorant, drenched in reddish-brown oil, lies limp on a Louisiana shore, water rippling around its splayed wings.

On a hook next to the picture hangs Anderson's white lab coat, embroidered with the words "Energy Biosciences Institute."

California's system for funding public schools is irrational, unstable and in need of overhaul, a lawsuit filed this week asserts, and prevents 6 million students from receiving the education they are entitled to under the state Constitution.

Critics of private organizations that support public universities have seized on Sarah Palin's upcoming appearance at California State University Stanislaus as the latest reason to expand California's public records law.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The state's budget crisis came into stark focus in the halls of Sacramento State last week, where many students returning for spring semester were turned away from classes they had hoped to get into, or strained from hallways to hear lectures in classes that had enrolled way more students than there were seats.