Lawmakers Scale Back Fee Increases for Colleges : Education: While the news was better than Cal State Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon expected, he said the system is still damaged and the Legislature must look for long-term solutions.

Students at the state’s two sprawling university systems got a rare dose of good news Tuesday with the Legislature’s changes to the state budget: Fee increases for next year are being significantly scaled back and financial aid is being boosted.

The lawmakers also softened Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed budget cuts and fee increases at the state’s 107 community colleges and followed the governor’s call to keep per-pupil spending for students in kindergarten through 12th grade the same as in the current fiscal year.

“From an education perspective, it’s not a good budget, but from a political perspective, we’ve done pretty well,” said Patrick McCallum, president of the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges, reflecting views expressed across the spectrum of the state’s vast systems of public education.

“This is better than I thought . . . we would be,” added Milton A. Gordon, president of Cal State Fullerton. “It’s like a person who feels he was going to have both arms cut off and now he’s going to get only one arm cut off.”

But Gordon said that the system is still damaged and that the Legislature must look for long-term solutions to the Cal State system’s fiscal problems.

For undergraduates at the nine UC campuses, fees are expected to rise about $630, instead of the $995 previously approved by the UC Board of Regents, UC officials said. As a result, average fees for a UC undergraduate who is a California resident will be about $3,675 in 1993-94, excluding room, board and books, if the governor signs the plan.

At the 20 California State University campuses, students face a $132 fee increase, or $348 less than what the CSU Board of Trustees voted for in March. So Cal State undergraduate fees are expected to average $1,440, without living expenses and activity charges.

“This is definitely a victory we are going to be claiming,” Anne Blackshaw, an official of the Cal State Student Assn., said of the change, which reduces a 37% fee hike to 10%.

At Cal State Fullerton, Liz Lopez, 19, of Fullerton said she had expected fees to jump about $200 per semester. When told that the annual increase would be $132, she had mixed emotions.

“It’s still bad, but it’s better than what I had heard,” Lopez said. “It’s a lot better actually.”

UC Irvine senior Greg Suzukawa, 22, a biology major, said he was glad to hear the news, but not overwhelmed.

“It’s better news, but it’s not the greatest,” Suzukawa said. “I’d rather have no fee increase.”

For community colleges, the Legislature bumped fees from $10 to $15 per credit, with a $150 per semester cap. With the help of loans against future funding, legislators also whittled the governor’s proposed $307-million cut to about $8 million. Fees for most students with bachelor’s degrees will remain at $50 per credit. Wilson had proposed raising basic fees to $30 per credit, with degree holders paying the full cost of instruction, just over $100 a credit.

Late Tuesday, McCallum was trying to get legislators, in a budget-related bill, to lower the fee hike to $13.

The Legislature gave $50 million more each to the UC and Cal State systems than Wilson requested. Nonetheless, programs will still be cut because UC will receive $88 million less and Cal State $18 million less than this year.

At UC, the $50 million will be used to lower fees and scale back a one-time pay cut for employees from 5% to 3.5%, said Larry Hershman, UC budget director. “We are feeling a bit better today than we have for a long time,” he said.

All of Cal State’s augmentation is going toward easing fee hikes, said spokeswoman Anne Ambrose.

The state-funded Cal Grants scholarships received a $51.2-million boost. The 35% increase in overall Cal Grant monies will raise the average scholarship from $2,100 to $3,500 next year at UC, from $900 to $1,500 at Cal State and from $4,450 to $5,250 at private schools, according to the Student Aid Commission.

For kindergarten through 12th grade, per-pupil spending will remain at the budgeted $4,187. Because enrollment grew at a slower-than-expected pace this year, there was actually $4,209 available for each student, said Jim Wilson, director of fiscal policy for the state Department of Education.

The governor’s office expects the schools to have more money available for the classroom through savings realized from no longer having to pay counties a property tax collection fee and from a yet-to-be-enacted overhaul of the state workers compensation system.

But the schools face a third consecutive year without a cost-of-living increase, and there will be some cuts in such specialized areas as programs for limited-English students, the gifted and those living in poverty.

Further, the budget provides some funding--$178 million for community colleges and $608 million for elementary and secondary schools--in the form of loans that are to be paid back from future budgets. Critics of the loan mechanism--employed for the second year in a row--said that it simply digs the colleges and schools into deeper holes in the future.

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this report.