In a 17-2 vote at UC Berkeley Wednesday, the UC Board of Regents
passed the 2006-2007 university budget, which includes a student
fee increase for the fifth straight year.
The vote came after a long discussion on whether a decision on
raising fees should be postponed until a preliminary state budget
can be drafted in January, when the state may have more funding for
the UC than previously expected.
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, D-Los Angeles, who is also a
regent and who proposed postponing the decision, and Student Regent
Adam Rosenthal were the only members of the board to vote against
the budget.
The board approved the fee increases with the stipulation that
they can be reduced or rescinded if the state is able to provide
enough funding before the increases go into effect.
The approved budget also included a change in the original draft
of the budget that would increase the percentage of fees used to
fund undergraduate financial aid from 25 to 33 percent.
Students came from various UC campuses to advocate for the
change in the “return to aid” funds, as they have been
doing for several meetings over the past year.
Jeannie Biniek, external vice president of UCLA’s
Undergraduate Students Association Council told the regents the
original plans in the budget called for 33 percent return to aid
for both graduate and undergraduate students, and so would not have
provided much support for undergraduates.
UC President Robert Dynes said the burden of the fee increases
will mostly be on high-income families because of the UC’s
commitment to financial aid for low- and middle-income
students.
But many students who attend the university vocally disagreed
with the president and the board’s decision to increase
fees.
When acting Provost Roy Hume said during a budget presentation
that most undergraduates are happy with their UC experience, two
students began singing and heckling the regents. They were removed
from the meeting by the UC Police Department.
Anu Joshi, president of the UC Student Association, said while
students can appreciate the need for sacrifices for higher
education, the level of fees that they are being asked to pay is
becoming unacceptable and may be detracting from students’
experiences while attending the university.
“Today’s students are more worried about paying
fees, rent and textbooks than becoming active members of their
campus communities,” Joshi said.
Dynes said the need to raise fees reflects the priorities the
regents have set for the university.
“Those priorities are to build back up the graduate
programs because they have declined in quality so rapidly, the
ratio of student to faculty, and the quality of the faculty and
staff,” Dynes said.
Nuñez proposed that student fees not be raised until
January. He said the fee increases may not be necessary because the
state has generated more funds this year than it had expected and
may be able to give more funds to the university.
Nuñez said making the decision now to increase fees will
impede the leveraging power of the Legislature to fight for more
funding for the UC.
“(Postponing the vote) gives us the opportunity to try to
negotiate a better deal for the UC, nothing more and nothing less
… Approving this today will make it a lot harder for us to
reverse that fee,” Nuñez said.
But Larry Hershman, UC’s vice president for budget, said
it is important not to wait too long to set fee increases and to
notify campuses and students.
He also said there has been many times in the past that the
state has given the university more money after the UC budget had
been passed. The approved budget includes a provision to reduce or
eliminate fee increases if the state can provide enough funding for
the UC.
“It’s not that unusual for the regents to vote for a
fee increase and then come back and rescind it,” Hershman
said.
Regent Gerald Parsky said by approving the amendment to the
budget to allow student fees to lower, the regents intended to send
a message to the state government that the university considers the
amount of state funding provided by the Higher Education Compact to
be a floor and not a unchangeable deal.
“The minute that we are notified that we can get some of
that (state) revenue then we will reduce or rescind these
fees,” Parsky said.
Several regents who supported the decision to raise fees said it
gives students and families adequate time to plan for the
increases.
The most vocal supporter of Nuñez’s plan for
postponing the increases, Regent Sherry Lansing, said she sensed
what seemed like a true partnership between the university.
But she commented on the “fundamental distrust” the
board seemed to have toward the governor and the Legislature, which
prevented several members from voting to postpone raising fees.
Several other regents voiced concern that students and their
families will not have sufficient time to plan for the fee
increases if the decision is postponed and the state is not able to
adequately fund the university.
“We’ve faced this before and it was a very difficult
time for everyone,” Regent Judith Hopkinson said, referring
to past student increases in which graduate students have sued the
university for not giving sufficient notice.
During the meeting Dynes also emphasized the need to increase
the quality of UC graduate programs. The programs, as well as
graduate student enrollments, lag behind those of comparable
universities, he said.
Regent George Marcus said a major part of maintaining the
quality of education at UC would be to improve the quality of these
programs.
Marcus proposed to eliminate graduate academic student fee
increases from the 2006-2007 budget, but his proposal was defeated
10-9 by a vote of the full board.