SAN FRANCISCO “”mdash; The University of California Board of
Regents just raised student fees by 30 percent, but in light of a
budget crisis likely worse than last year’s, they are forced
to consider raising fees again.
“I don’t think any of us believed we would have to
raise fees anything like this, and here we are having to
contemplate more increases,” said Budget Vice President Larry
Hershman.
At their meeting at UC San Francisco Sept. 17, the regents
discussed a variety of ways to deal with the looming budget crisis,
including a number of creative ways to increase student fees.
California’s $38.2 billion deficit forced the regents to
raise student fees in mid-summer to nearly $5,000 per year for all
UC undergraduates.
Several new proposals currently on the table find different ways
to collect fees, taking from certain groups instead of distributing
the burden equally to all 155,000 UC undergraduate students. One
proposal takes a similar route to the increases of the summer,
suggesting the UC closes the gap between its fees and those of
comparable public institutions by again raising fees for all
students.
The proposal to close this gap calls for an increase of about
$1,800 per student, a nearly 40 percent increase on top of the
increase this summer.
Another proposal, advocated by UC President Richard Atkinson,
calls for increasing the enrollment of out-of-state students, who
are charged thousands of dollars more in fees than in-state
students, and simultaneously increasing their fees. This would
raise additional revenues without hurting resident students.
“If we increase the fees, we could clearly draw more
students from out of state,” Atkinson said, emphasizing he
believed an increase would not severely affect out-of-state
interest in UC schools.
Atkinson said this proposed out-of-state policy closely follows
that of other comparable universities across the country such as
Michigan State.
Currently, students pay about 25 percent of their total cost of
education with the state paying the rest. One proposal suggests
that a unit threshold should be enforced, so that students who take
more than 5 to 10 percent of the units they need for graduation
would pay the full cost of their education.
Many regents expressed complete opposition to raising student
fees any more than they already have been, but also say they are
forced to consider raising them as one of their only viable
options.
“Education should not be an elimination process,”
said Regent Dolores Huerta, adding that raising fees severely
threatens accessibility, one of the UC’s primary
missions.
Regent Ward Connerly, who has historically voted against raising
fees, considered a fee increase his last option, but admits there
is a possibility of being forced to raise them.
Matt Kaczmarek, chairman of the UC Students Association, said
his organization will spend several months reviewing the options
Hershman presented, adding he was interested in Atkinson’s
out-of-state proposal but is adamantly against student fees in
general.
“”˜Freeze our fees’ is a phrase this board will
hear loud and often,” Kaczmarek, also a UCLA undergraduate
officer, said to the board during the meeting.
Kaczmarek also expressed dissatisfaction with the way Hershman
represented fee increases in his presentation, saying the negative
consequences of increased student fees were downplayed compared to
some of the other options, such as cutting programs or curbing
enrollment growth.
With reports from Charles Proctor, Bruin Senior
Staff.