The UC Board of Regents voted Wednesday to approve fee increases for professional programs for the 2012-13 school year.
The newly approved tuition levels, known as professional degree supplemental tuition charges, will affect more than 50 programs within the UC, ranging from establishing supplemental tuition for the first time in some programs to increasing the tuition levels by up to 35 percent in others.
Of the 57 programs impacted with increased tuition, seven have approved fee increases of more than 10 percent, including UCLA’s nursing program.
The remaining programs will undergo tuition increases of 10 or less percent, or remain stable.
At Wednesday’s regents meeting, opponents of professional degree supplemental tuition expressed concerns that the tuition increases will adversely affect graduate students’ careers.
Currently, graduate student loans are not subsidized by the government, which means interest on loans accumulate while students attend school. For this reason, many graduate students have much higher debts, said Angelica Salceda, a third-year law student at UC Berkeley and external affairs vice president of the campus’ graduate student assembly.
“(Grad students) are being forced to choose careers based on their debts,” Salceda said. “I want to be a community-based lawyer, but I might change my mind when I graduate and start receiving the (loan) bills.”
Some regents and student protesters also questioned whether a tuition raise would prevent minority students from being financially eligible to enroll in professional programs.
Supporters say, however, that since many professional students start high-paying specialized jobs soon after completing their degrees, increased fees do not financially burden professional program students as much as their undergraduate counterparts.
A vote to raise fees was necessary because the state recently stopped subsidizing professional programs, said Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman.
“Schools have been starved for resources,” Klein said. “In order to retain quality, we needed to raise these fees.”
The UC Office of the President inspects every graduate program requesting supplemental tuition for sufficient justification of the increase, according to a UC report. Some considerations include the intended use of the supplemental tuition, as well as market comparisons of tuitions at similar private and public universities.
Compiled by Suzy Strutner, Bruin reporter. Contributing reports by Emily Suh, Bruin senior staff.