In a letter to The Times in May, Ralph Jones of Riverside reminisced about how easy and cheap it was to go to the University of California in the old days.
When he arrived at UC Riverside in 1968, he said, he paid $105 per quarter in non-instructional fees, plus books. He paid $75 per month to share what he called a "nice" two-bedroom apartment. To transfer to Berkeley all he had to do was sign a card and show up.
"I look back on this as a time of affordable abundance," he wrote. "I pity the students trapped in a system that was once designed for essentially free access for all California students with good grades."
