Student fees are increasing for University of California
students. But that’s not the only way that paying for higher
education is becoming more difficult.
Students living in UCLA’s residence halls next year will
face a housing fee increase of about 8 percent. Over the next five
years, housing fees are projected to increase by 35 percent, as the
administration looks to build more dorms to accommodate enrollment
growth and increased demand for rooms.
“The majority of this increase has to do with … the
addition of new housing spaces that are under construction or will
be constructed,” said Director of Housing Michael
Foraker.
Housing’s 10-year master plan aims to ensure housing will
have enough space to guarantee all incoming freshmen four years of
housing and all transfer students two years.
For the remainder of this decade, Housing expects to spend
$465,000,000 in building the bedspaces required by the Housing
Master Plan and renovation of existing facilities ““ and these
additions will raise student fees.
Most of these building costs will be funded from the sale of
bonds, which will require annual debt payments to repay.
“We typically have to begin collecting the funds needed to
make these payments a year in advance of the opening of the related
projects,” said Housing Administration Business Manager Dan
Les. “These debt payments are driving the current series of
rate increases.”
The increase in room and board fees is also due partly to
inflationary impacts and a significant increase in employer pay
portions of health care plans.
Still, some students have questioned whether they should be
paying more money for benefits which will never accrue to them.
“I don’t think its really fair that we have to pay
for buildings we’ll never use,” said first-year
psychology student Jennifer Lee. “But then again, the
buildings that we use right now and the facilities we use right now
were paid by other students before us who probably thought it was
unfair, too.”
Since Housing is an auxiliary organization, it has a separate
budget from the rest of the University and is ineligible to receive
state funding. Thus Housing, and not the University, is accountable
for its own budget.
“We are obligated to set our own rates so we can pay for
operating services, debt service, and still retain enough for the
maintenance needs of the Housing program,” Foraker said.
Particularly because of Housing’s ineligibility for state
funding, enrollment growth and capital developments pose great
difficulties.
But to ensure that students get back as much as possible for
their housing fees, Housing administrators and OCHC work to find
ways to lower the housing fee increases.
“Our management staff works year-round to figure out how
to efficiently reduce as much spending as we can but still provide
students with the quality life on campus that they have,”
Foraker said.
Housing has attempted to lower the cost of utilities on the
residence hall by implementing facilities, such as the solar assist
domestic hot water system that heats 40 percent of the water in the
high rise residence halls, state-of-the-art dining halls to use
utilities efficiently and ecologically-friendly carts.
“We make sure we are conserving energy whenever we can do
so,” Foraker said.
These utility-saving facilities might cost students more at the
time they are being constructed, but in the long run they will save
money, Foraker said.
UCLA is not alone in its increase in housing costs. Housing fees
are increasing among all the UCs, from as little as 3.5 percent at
UC Riverside, to as high as 9 percent at UC Irvine.
Most of the other UCs are increasing their fees for the same
reasons as UCLA: construction of new facilities, inflation and
increased pay for employees.
Some UCs charge more for housing: at this time, UC Berkeley and
UC Santa Cruz have higher room and board rates than UCLA.
“We are committed to do anything we can to keep fee
increases at an absolute minimum,” Foraker said.