quote: Any fee hikes for the UC and CSU systems would come on top of increases for undergraduate and graduate students in the past 13 months of about 40% — the steepest fee hikes in state history.
Both university systems raised undergraduate student fees by 30% before the current fall term began, a jump that followed a rise of 10% to 15% for undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, in December 2002.
For professional school students, those same December fee increases ranged from 19% to 26%.
The governor's budget is not expected to provide better news for the state's community college students. Officials at the two-year colleges have said they are preparing for the governor to propose raising fees from $18 to $26 per credit, a 44% increase.
That move would follow a fee increase last year for community college students, from $11 to $18 a credit. The state's budget crisis also has forced the colleges to cut course offerings significantly in that time period, with more students crowding into the remaining classes.
A few decades back, CA had one of the best higher education systems in the country. He's far from the first governor to siphon money away from it, but on top of his idiotic DMV fee rebate and some of his other financial moves, this is just infuriating.
And this clown campaigned as a pro-education candidate! I'm not surprised -- this was all too predictable -- but I am steamed.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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What the heck is the difference between tuition and fees? If fees are paying for buildings, what is tuition paying for?
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
The Framers of the Constitution of California wrote that students would not pay tuition.
It's a profound statement on democracy: having students pay tuition makes about as much sense as having soldier pay for their enlistment.
Registration fees started creeping in and were allowable as long as they were student service-oriented, or could be thought of as extra-curricular, then infrastructure, then administration, and now lab fees, so essentially, and the process has become so muddled that it seems that the Californians have forgotten why we subsidize education.
Hey, I wonder what OSC thinks of this. He went to school in California before Prop 13, and back when we could be proud of the range and rigor of our school system. You can blame Reagan. You can blame Schwarzenegger. But in the end, the fault lies with the voters who were so in love with the idea of a little more income that they forgot the essential and positive factors of California's politics, economy, and culture, was a well-educated and able populace.
posted
I asked someone who knows a lot about this subject why the CSU and UC systems don't push harder for an annual fee increase so that the changes come incrementally instead of all at once.
He said that at first glance that plan made a lot of sense to him, but as he got a closer look at the reality of how politics works he realized that the incremental fee increase would
1. tempt the legislature to decrease the amount that goes to the systems from the general fund -- thus making universities even more dependent on fees.
2. tempt the legislature to make one-time raids on any surpluses the universities had managed to store up i.e. instead of giving you the money to build that new library at UCLA or new science building at Sac State we're going to make you pay for it out of your surplus
3. create a situation where since the bar is raised in small steps, the next time a budget crisis comes, the legislature would put pressure on the systems to raise the fees by a large percentage anyway -- hey, they've only gone up by 4% each year the last 8 years, it won't hurt students too much if we give them a 10 or 12% increase (or more).
That said, the CSU and UC systems are still the best educaiton for the buck in the country. Of course, if things keep going like this, the same thing will happen to them that happened to the K-12 -- the quality will decrease because the systems won't be able to increase student services, update infrastructure (technology and buildings are incredibly important but at the moment so many campuses are deferring maintanence and upgrades so that they can continue to provide they're full academic program -- it's basically a gamble that eventually the money will be there to upgrade, of course, at some point the degredation reaches a point where it's been deferred so much that the cost for repairs and upgrades skyrockets), and attract the best faculty.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
This has already happened to Oregon schools. The budgets were slashed a TON last year, but each school was left to figure out how to deal with their respective situations. In most schools, tuition AND fees have been hiked this year. The tuition plateau was also abolished at PSU, so now even full-time students have to pay BY THE CREDIT and everyone's scholarships will only pay up to some ridiculously small amount of credits (15 or something.)
PSU has also taxed all of the orginazations and clubs 10%, so any money we are budgeted from the Student Funds we have to give 10% of it BACK to the school. This is on top of a hike in student fees. So we pay MORE fees, but our organizations get less money.
It really really does suck. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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You want to know why colleges are getting tuition increases? Because college students barely vote. If you don't vote, you are going to be ignored and screwed over. As long as the young people in this country are apolitical retards, then they get what they deserve. Don't cry for the California colleges, cry for the spineless wimps who go to them and let this happen.
The silver lining in all of this, hopefully, is that now Californian college students will understand that politics isn't a spectator sport and get involved.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Tuition is going up all around the country because of increasing costs and decreasing state budgets. California is in the same situation. What do you expect them to do? They can't just manufacture the money to pay for it out of thin air.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
He could have started by NOT cutting the DMV fees. That was a political move, but fiscally idiotic.
(Ironically, I'm arguing against a move that puts money in my pocket, and for one that currently has no direct affect on me at all.)
Once upon a time, higher education in CA was seen as sacrosanct. That time was over long before I went to UCLA, when funding had been cut so much that the average student spent 5 years to get an undergraduate degree -- largely because of the difficulty of getting into required classes. Classes that departments would have loved to offer more sections of, had they not lacked the funding.
I hear it's gotten significantly worse. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Technically, Schwarzennegar isn't breaking any promises. When he campaigned, he made sure to say that he wouldn't cut anything from K-12 education. Most people forget that the UC's and CSU's aren't included in that. This makes me especially mad, since I'm a senior in California, and a lot of my friends won't be able to afford to go to UC's next year. And community colleges are getting more expensive, too. If only Schwarzenneger could donate some of his millions to the state budget...
Posts: 274 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Maybe you (Californians) should enact a law wherein crowds of anonymous angry people with sharp implements and torches are allowed to storm various wealthy persons homes and take their money and stuff to be auctioned and contributed to the state college budget.
"Get involved, get some friends ransack a movie star's home today!"
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