The UC Board of Regents approved a measure on Thursday that will increase student fees by 9.3 percent in the upcoming school year, closing the door on a debate that has provoked opposition from students statewide throughout the past year.
The fee increases will include a 10 percent hike in educational fees, a 4.2 percent increase in registration fees and a 10 percent rise in tuition for nonresident undergraduate students.
Following a discussion between students and the UC Regents in which many expressed reluctance to pass the proposal, 17 members of the board voted in favor of increasing fees, citing the imminent need for more funds as a result of state budget cuts.
However, four of the voting members, Regents D’Artagnan Scorza, Odessa Johnson and Eddie Island, along with Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, refused to approve the proposal despite the cuts in state funding.
“I don’t think the response ought to be just to increase fees and nothing more and hope that next year will be better. Because next year isn’t going to be better, and we will have to increase fees even further,” Island said.
He added that continually increasing student fees, which have been approved in seven of the last eight years, are changing the fundamental mission of the UC system, which is to provide affordable and accessible higher education.
UC President Mark G. Yudof, addressing worries that increased fees will decrease the quality of UC education, said that most of the additional fees will be offset by increases in financial aid.
“I think many of you are exaggerating a little on the consequences that will result from the fee increases. Looking at the numbers, 81 percent of families with incomes under $180,000 will not a pay penny more due to financial aid,” Yudof said.
He also noted that the UC had tried tirelessly to garner support from the state government but with no success.
“We submitted a budget to the state with zero fee increases, but that didn’t last for 24 hours. The governor’s office submitted back to us a budget with $115 million in cuts and a ten percent student fee increase,” he said.
Regent Bruce Varner said that the state has been historically cautious when granting money to the UC system because of worries about unnecessary funding.
“We have to convince the legislature that we have taken steps to reduce unnecessary funding,” Varner said.
To protest the fee increases, members of the UC Students Association and other UC students presented arguments to the board during the public comment period. Students from various UC campuses reiterated a similar statement, denouncing what they referred to as the “High fee, High aid” model that the university is using.
“It is a myth that the UC is still accessible. Student fees have increased 10,000 percent in the last fifty years, while the inflation rate has only increased 1,000 percent,” said Brandon Harrison, a fourth-year history student at UCLA and a member of UCSA.
But many of these student voices were silenced as technical difficulties, which were prevalent throughout the meeting, interrupted their accounts. In addition, the time allotted for each speaker was only one minute, which was rarely long enough for the speakers to finish what they had come to say.
One student who was given the opportunity to fully express her opposition to the proposal was UCSA President Lucero Chavez, a second-year law student at UC Berkeley.
“I have a very high threshold for pain, but we are nearing a breaking point. It’s not just about this year’s 9.3-percent fee increase or how we compare to other private universities, but it’s about accessibility to higher education,” she said.
She added that many students, especially those from low-income families, are forced to turn away from their dreams of a UC education, because of the “sticker shock” they face when applying to the university.
Following the UC Regent’s meeting, Chavez held a press teleconference in reaction to the board’s decision to increase fees.
During the teleconference, Chavez argued that the UC Regents expect students to contribute more every year when the quality of education isn’t necessarily increasing.
“We want to start working with the regents’ lobbying office and convene a group that, along with students, looks at long-term fee policy,” Chavez said.
Although discussion of the fee proposal dominated the conference, the board also discussed numerous other issues.
The board approved fee increases for 36 professional degree programs within the university as part of a three-year fee increase plan which includes strategies for including underrepresented groups, marketing and outreach plans and the consideration of student and faculty views, according to the UC Board of Regents Web site.
The board also unanimously supported a measure to begin development on revisions to the registration fee policy, which will be voted on in January 2010. The revisions will propose the establishment of an annual report on the use of registration fee and the creation of a Web site that would make the report available to the public.
At the meeting, the board also appointed Susan Desmond-Hellmann as the next chancellor of UC San Francisco, while Linda Katehi was chosen as the chancellor of UC Davis.
With additional reporting by Rotem Ben-Shachar, Bruin reporter.