Cal State Fees to Increase 20% for Next Year

The California State University trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to raise student fees 20% for next year and authorized hefty budget cuts that are expected to reduce both the availability of classes and enrollment at the 20 Cal State campuses.

The annual education fees will be $936 for full-time students who are California residents and $7,380 for out-of-staters. Those figures do not include living expenses, books, transportation and activities charges, which can total an extra $7,000 or so.

“There is no alternative. We just have to raise the fees, plain and simple,” declared trustee Willie J. Stennis after listening to grim forecasts about the recession’s effect on state tax revenues.

With the 20% fee increase, the Cal State trustees followed a recommendation in Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed state budget rather than echoing the UC Board of Regents, who raised their student fees 40% last month, to $2,274 for state residents. Trustees reasoned that Cal State students, on average, are less affluent and more likely to be financially independent of their parents than counterparts at UC, California’s other four-year public university.

Still, Cal State trustees decided to break with state policy of trying to limit annual fee hikes to 10%. Wilson, an ex officio trustee, attended Wednesday’s meeting in Long Beach and told other trustees: “These are very, very difficult times . . . there are some difficult and unpleasant choices that have to be made.” His January budget offered the Cal State system $1.659 billion in general revenue funds for 1991-92, about $402 million less than trustees requested.

To help bridge that gap, trustees decided Wednesday also to: cut 864 non-teaching jobs through attrition, early retirement and layoffs; encourage more than 400 professors to take early retirement and replace them with lower-paid teachers; not hire the additional 340 professors reportedly needed to cope with enrollment growth; allow no cost-of-living pay increases, and reduce funds for equipment and maintenance. What’s more, all 20 campuses--from San Diego State in the south to Humboldt State up north--probably will have to cut about another 10% from their operating budgets.

As a result, students will have a tougher time obtaining courses needed for graduation and some may get discouraged and drop out, officials conceded.

“We take no pleasure in proposing any of these actions to the board,” said Ellis E. McCune, the system’s acting chancellor.

This year, about 368,000 full- and part-time students attend a Cal State campus, translating into the equivalent of about 280,000 full-timers. That full-time equivalency will decline at least 2% and probably more, said Lee R. Kerschner, vice chancellor for academic affairs.

“Some classes won’t be scheduled. So we believe enrollment could be significantly down,” Kerschner explained. Trustees, however, did not mandate a particular enrollment target.

About 30 students sat in the audience Wednesday and carried placards bearing slogans such as “20% is Unethical” and “Why Pay More for Less?” Student leaders were bitter about the fee increase and program cuts.

“We are turning into a system that does not provide the classes we need to get a degree,” said Kim Williams, the Los Angeles student who heads the Cal State system’s student association. She described many Cal State students as people who juggle school with the responsibilities of jobs and families and she predicted the trustees’ actions Wednesday will make that juggling harder to continue.

The student representative on the Board of Trustees, Scott Vick, said a Cal State education was still “the best bargain in town.” But before voting reluctantly for the 20% hike, Vick said: “The tragedy of the situation is that some students are going to be locked out of the opportunity for higher education.”