Wilson Lauds Trustees for Cal State Fee Hike : Education: He tells board that students don’t understand the need for the 40% increase. He also blasts Democratic lawmakers who he claims are exploiting campus protests.

State university students do not appreciate the “courage” it took for the California State University Board of Trustees to approve a 40% fee increase for the next academic year, and Democratic lawmakers are trying to capitalize politically on the students’ short-sightedness, Gov. Pete Wilson said Wednesday.

In a speech to the board, Wilson--who included the 40% hike in his January budget proposal--said the trustees have “shown the guts and the vision” to set priorities while Assembly Democrats who want to limit any fee increase to 10% are acting with “cruelty” toward the students.

The Republican governor’s reasoning: the lower the fee increase, the bigger the budget cuts the 20-campus state university system will have to absorb. Higher budget cuts will mean more faculty layoffs and fewer classes, he says. Students already in college will take longer to get their degrees and young people hoping to enter the system will be denied access.

“If they (students) don’t appreciate it now, perhaps in the fullness of time they will come to,” Wilson told the board.

Cal State officials applauded the governor’s logic, but a student leader said Wilson’s attitude was condescending. California State Student Assn. legislative advocate Jeffrey Kin Wah Chang said the trustees deserve criticism, not praise, for failing to find a more creative way out of a budget crisis than simply raising student fees.

The proposed $372 increase in annual fees--from $1,078 to $1,450--would raise about $116 million. The 40% fee increase, which would come on the heels of a 20% hike last year, requires the consent of the Legislature.

An Assembly subcommittee with control over the system’s budget voted last week to limit the increase to 10%, but the Democrats who control the committee conceded they do not have the political muscle to enforce their will.

Democratic Assemblyman Robert J. Campbell of Richmond, chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on education finance, said the trustees should not “take seriously” the panel’s action because the Senate and the governor will insist on a higher fee increase, leading to a compromise.

But by taking their stand, Campbell said, Assembly Democrats hope to move public opinion toward accepting a package of tax increases--labeled “loophole closures”--that would help alleviate the budget shortfall. The real issue, he said, is whether the state can “find some more money” for higher education.

Wilson, however, told the trustees Wednesday morning that “a tax increase is not going to happen.” A bailout for the universities from the state’s general fund is equally unlikely, he said, because the budget he proposed in January already is $2 billion to $6 billion out of balance because of the recession’s impact on tax receipts. The only way out, he said, is the 40% fee increase.

“Ironically, those students who will protest the fees--and no one will enjoy paying higher fees--seem to have lost sight of the fact that what you are doing in acting responsibly is seeing to it they don’t have to take seven years to get through (college),” Wilson said.

He added: “I don’t know why they think that a decline in your budget would serve the purpose of expanding opportunity. Clearly it does not. It has exactly the opposite effect.”

“It will not help the students,” Wilson said of limiting the fee increase to 10%. “In truth it is a cruelty to them, a disservice. . . . While you have shown courage and foresight, regrettably I must tell you the Legislature has not.”

Trustees Chairman William Campbell called Wilson’s speech the “most supportive statement”’ the board had ever received from a governor. But faculty and student representatives disagreed.

Bob Gurion, legislative advocate for the California Faculty Assn., said Wilson and state lawmakers ought to re-examine the entire university funding structure and direct money away from the separate University of California to the state university campuses.

Chang, of the student association, said Wilson’s remark about students not appreciating the fee increase was “an extremely condescending” statement.

“He talked a lot about how the trustees have vision and courage,” Chang said. “That’s exactly what they have been lacking. They’ve lacked the vision to see what effect the massive fee increases would have on the system and they’ve lacked the courage to demand more resources.”

Chang’s group suggests using a 10% fee increase, $23 million in administrative cuts and $46 million in lottery funds to close the Cal State budget gap.

In a tumultuous scene reminiscent of the 1960s, hundreds of Cal State Northridge students Wednesday protested the proposed 40% fee increase, threatening a student strike if campus administrators do not join their cause by week’s end.

The protest was the latest in a series of rallies around the state prompted by the governor’s proposal.