Full-time undergraduate students at all 23 campuses of the California State University system will find themselves paying an extra $978 in fees beginning this fall.
The CSU board of trustees voted Tuesday to add $672 in fees for undergraduate students, in addition to a $306 increase approved in May, bringing the base tuition for the CSU to $4,026 per year.
Annual fees for a teaching credential and for graduate students will be raised by $780 and $828, respectively. The board also voted to increase tuition for nonresidents, bringing the total cost of school for out-of-state students to nearly $16,000 a year.
The increases are part of a “four-legged stool” approach to combatting the CSU’s $584 million budget deficit. The other three “legs” represent reduced enrollment, furloughs and layoffs of staff and faculty members. Each campus in the system has also been asked to make cuts of their own.
“The magnitude of the budget shortfall requires us to put everything on the table,” said Benjamin F. Quillian, executive vice chancellor and the chief financial officer of the CSU. Quillian stressed the need for a multi-pronged solution.
“If we were to close the entire deficit by reducing expenditures, the impact to student access and quality of our academic offerings would be catastrophic,” he said.
As the trustees voted to increase fees, about half the audience that had assembled in the auditorium where the board meets stood and chanted, “Shame on you.” Scores of protesters waited in the lobby and outside the building. Some attempted to block exits while others waited in a parking lot, hoping to engage trustees and the chancellor as they walked to their cars.
Trustees argued that even with the new fees, the CSU system will remain more affordable than nearly all of its peers. Quillian also said that increased financial aid and new tax breaks will protect about 187,000 students from any increase. The new fees are expected to provide about $79 million in financial aid, according to a CSU press release.
During a public comment session, many students said they would be impacted despite financial aid increases. One student from San Diego State University said his parents won’t support him because he is openly gay, but he said he is too young to apply for federal student aid on his own.
Diana Heredia, president of Associated Students Inc. at Cal State Stanislaus, called on the trustees to negotiate a new master plan for higher education so that the university system would not face huge budget shortfalls in the future.
“My purpose today was not to ask you to vote down the student fee increase because I know that higher education will not survive without the income,” Heredia said.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who cast the sole vote against increased fees, called upon the trustees to support an oil severance tax to fund higher education in California.
“There is no more important investment than the investment in education,” Garamendi said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed also announced that if employee unions do not accept furloughs by July 28, their members will face layoffs. The CSU Employees Union is the only union to negotiate an agreement so far, after members voted 81 percent in favor of accepting furloughs. The California Faculty Association extended its voting deadline to Wednesday after a computer error caused some votes to go uncounted.
Administrators, including the chancellor, will be furloughed two days per month beginning Aug. 1.
This article was updated at 8:09 p.m. on July 22, 2009. The amount of the total fee increase should have read $978 instead of $972.
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