California State Student Association president Christopher Chavez testified in front of the State Assembly’s committee for higher education yesterday in light of increasing tuition and decreasing affordability within the California higher education system.
Chavez, a Cal State Long Beach student and former ASI president, spoke on behalf of the Cal State University’s 433,000 students. Jasmin Esparza, University of California Santa Barbara legislative council representative, and Alex Pader, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, represented the UC and CCC systems, respectively.
“If there’s anything I want for California, it is [affordable education],” Chavez said to the nine members of the committee. “We must invest in California students, California future and California public system.”
Chavez also said he feared he wouldn’t be able to go to college if he was a 2011 high school graduate.
The CSSA president spoke at the CSU Board of Trustees meeting last November when it approved a 15.5 percent tuition increase for the fall 2011-12 academic year.
According to Olgalilia Ramirez, CSSA director of government, the student association’s aim was to “put a face to the issue” and “provide a student perspective” to a committee that is “accustomed to using figures.”
In fact, the oversight meeting was not short of statistics.
Committee chairman Marty Block, D-San Diego, started the meeting by citing a sharp decline in the state’s National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education affordability grade, which dropped from an A in 2008 to a C- in 2009.
Jessika Jones, a policy analyst for the California Postsecondary Education Commission, said that although the CSU and UC’s tuition ranks lower than most other public universities, California’s high cost of living makes its universities less affordable.
Jones also said that university tuition only accounts for one-third of the total cost of attendance. She compared the University of Illinois to California public universities, claiming that while California had lower tuition rates, its total cost of attendance was higher.
“What is the mechanism for getting cost control?” asked Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, characterizing a committee that had a deep concern for college costs. “[We need] to make college affordable.”
Katcho Achadjian, R-Arroyo Grande, called education California’s “only tool in the tool box.”
College affordability has extended far beyond student wallets, though.
A recent UC Los Angeles study on CSU Northridge concluded that students face a high level of stress because of a rising tuition.
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