Regents Increase Some Fees for UC

University of California regents on Thursday voted to raise fees by as much as 7% a year for some categories of professional school students.

The hike, which would take effect in January, applies to students in graduate schools of law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry and other professions. It follows a 3% rise in fees already approved for this fall.

UC President Robert C. Dynes and several campus leaders said the increases, which amount to as much as a 10% hike for some students by the 2006 academic year, were necessary to offset state budget reductions. In the last four years, the 10-campus system has lost 15% of its state funding, even as its enrollment has risen 19%.

“There has been a continual erosion of the quality of education being delivered at many of the professional schools,” Dynes told the regents.

Christopher Edley Jr., dean of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, also appealed to the regents to grant the higher fees, saying his school was losing its ability to remain competitive. Edley said he needed the additional funding to retain and recruit faculty, improve academic programs and repair facilities.

Workers “are drilling right now” in the floor of the school’s reading room, Edley said. “I need the money to pay them.”

Regent Richard C. Blum said the board had no alternative. “We don’t like to see this happen, but until someone figures out how to find the money elsewhere, I don’t know what we can do,” he said.

But the vote, on the second day of the UC governing board’s regular meeting here, came over the vocal opposition of a number of regents, as well as students, who said the eleventh-hour increase would affect the ability of some to remain in school.

“This is not fair,” said Jennifer Lilla, a UC San Francisco graduate student who is president of the UC Student Assn. “It came late in the year, when most students’ budgets were set months and months ago. There has to be a better solution.”

UC Berkeley law student Miguel Casillas, 24, suggested the regents had picked a group that often got little sympathy. “People think of us as a privileged group that can afford these fee increases,” Casillas told the regents. “The truth of the matter is we’re not.”

Regent Norman J. Pattiz, who voted against the proposal, said that although he understood schools such as Boalt needed additional funding to remain competitive, “it’s shortsighted and a tremendous mistake to put it on the backs of our students.”

The increases vary by campus, school and a student’s residency status.

For example, a California resident law student will pay as much as $24,000 a year, and resident medical students face about $22,000 in annual fees. Nursing students who are California residents will pay up to $11,000 in fees.

The costs for out-of-state or international students at UC professional schools are considerably higher. With the new fees, nonresident UC law students will pay about $35,000 next year.

Fees for UC’s professional school students have risen several times in recent years, and some students have responded by suing the university, saying it broke a promise that fees would remain unchanged during their tenure.

Last year, a Superior Court judge in San Francisco granted a temporary injunction in one such lawsuit, blocking the university from raising fees for some students above the 2003-04 level. A final decision on that case is pending. A similar lawsuit was filed this month by attorneys for professional school students seeking to block increases slated for the coming academic year.

On Thursday, the regents reacted to the injunction by imposing a separate, temporary fee increase on professional school students to make up for the revenue it is unable to collect because of the first lawsuit. The hike, approved on a 10-8 vote, will amount to an extra $700 for professional school students this school year and will rise to $1,050 in 2006-07.

Students said that additional fee, too, was unfair, and some predicted that it might prompt further legal challenges.

“It’s just totally inappropriate to impose that,” said Jared Fox, a graduate student in computer science who is president of UCLA’s Graduate Student Assn. “It really looks like some kind of retaliation against students.”