Trustees of the California State University system voted Tuesday to increase tuition for some 400,000 students at all 23 campuses. The action comes less than a month after Sacramento lawmakers cut Cal State’s budget by $650 million.
Outside California State University’s headquarters in Long Beach, several dozen students protested the fee hike that’ll increase yearly tuition to nearly $5,500.
Cal State Dominguez Hill student Javier Lavoe urged students to form their own chapters of a group called Students Fight Back. “Enough is enough,” he said. “Every semester we come in and there’s another tuition hike. Every semester we come in and find overcrowded classrooms. Every semester we come in there’s no classes to register so people have to waitlist left and right. It shouldn’t be like that. There is money out there.” On a 13-to-2 vote Cal State trustees voted to increase undergraduate, resident tuition to just under $5,500 a year, which doesn’t include room, board or campus fees. Three years ago that same student paid $2,400 less. Annual tuition would increase $678 for credential program students and $720 for graduate students.
University administrators say the additional increase is necessary because the new state budget reduces funding by more than 20 percent. The system stands to lose another $100 million if the state generates less revenue than projected.
“The enormous reduction to our state funding has left us with no other choice if we are to maintain quality and access to the CSU,” said Chancellor Charles Reed.
Trustee Melinda Guzman said without the increase even more students would be shut out of a Cal State education. “We have to be committed to exploring all other alternatives in order to avoid a fee increase in the future,” she said. “This really is a result of the legislature’s failure to invest properly in higher education in California, which has long term ramifications for California’s future.”
Trustee Gavin Newsom agreed with the protesters. “We’ve tripled now the tuition at the CSU system in the last ten years,” he said. “People, I don’t think fully appreciate this, it’s the new norm. We’ve almost gotten used to the notion that there’s going to be a tuition increase not once every cycle but potentially 2 or 3 times.”
Newsom’s criticism joined criticism from others against trustees for moving forward with the plan at the same time administrators increased the salary of a new San Diego State University president.
Earlier Tuesday, a CSU board committee approved a controversial $400,000 compensation package for Elliot Hirshman, the new president of San Diego State University. That’s $100,000 more than that of his predecessor Stephen Weber ever made. Trustees said that salary is necessary to attract a top-notch administrator.
In a letter to board Chairman Herbert Carter, Gov. Jerry Brown criticized the move, questioning whether Hirshman should be paid twice as much as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. “I fear your approach to compensation is setting a pattern for public service that we cannot afford,” Brown wrote.
Carter acknowledged the governor’s concerns, but said it was too late to reject a compensation package already promised to Hirshman. The chairman said the board would create a task force to review CSU’s compensation and salary policies for administrators.
Pati Guerra, 21, said she’s tired of seeing CSU trustees deal with the budget crunch by pushing fees higher and higher. The Cal Poly Pomona student said one of her younger brothers had to drop out of school because of the increases, and another brother is now looking into studying out of state.
“They keep on taxing the students,” she said. “The CSU claims to be an affordable, accessible and a quality education. But that’s no longer the case.”
“We are vehemently disappointed in what has happened today,” said Gregory Washington, president of the California State Student Association. “The sad truth is that California isn’t prioritizing its higher education.”
The tuition increase won’t solve Cal State’s money problems. The university’s cutting enrollment by 10,000 students this fall, and will not renew the contracts of part-time faculty in order to protect full-time professors’ jobs.
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