Take a Hike (in tuition) at CSU – and Eventually at UC

CSU considers spring fee hike (excerpt)

Capitol Alert, October 29, 2010, Laurel Rosenhall

California State University trustees will vote on a mid-year fee increase on Nov. 9 that would raise tuition by 5 percent for the spring term. If the action is approved, tuition for a semester at a CSU campus would rise to $2,220, not including fees that specific campuses charge or books, housing and living expenses.

The proposal is not unexpected. When CSU trustees voted in June to raise fees for the current semester they said they would consider another fee increase after a state budget was approved. The budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed earlier this month assumed CSU tuition would go up by 10 percent — but trustees had raised fees by only 5 percent in June.

…Cal State officials also are officially changing the terminology they use to describe the money students pay to attend college — instead of calling it “fees” they will now use the word “tuition.” Historically both UC and CSU have used the term “fees” because California’s 50-year-old master plan for higher education called for a tuition-free university system. Acknowledging how far the state has strayed from that vision, both of California’s public university systems have now decided to start using the word “tuition,” just like universities in the rest of the nation…

Full article at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/10/csu-considers-spring-fee-hike.html

UPDATE: The San Francisco Chronicle has a more detailed account which says that the increase is 5.5% mid-year plus another 10% the following year. See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/10/30/MN481G46C7.DTL

Is it too much?

Further UPDATE: The LA Times story includes info that UC will not have mid-year tuition hikes but is likely to have one next year, in the opinion of the Legislative Analyst’s Office and UC administrators.

See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1030-college-fees-20101030,0,7067432.story