Another Round of Fee Hikes Sought at UC, Cal State : Education: Administrators say the funds are needed to boost salaries. Students express outrage at planned increases ranging from $342 to $650 per year.

California college students’ fees may jump $342 to $650 next year under proposed spending plans released this week by the Cal State and University of California systems.

Administrators of both systems say the fee increases may be necessary to halt the erosion of educational quality--primarily by boosting salaries to retain professors-- but students expressed outrage Thursday over the proposals. In the face of successive budget crises, students in both systems have seen their annual fees rise significantly since 1989.

“Students are angry and students are tired, too,” said Anne Blackshaw, lobbyist for the CSU Student Assn. “This is a battle that students have been fighting year after year. “

The biggest proposed increases, ranging from 24% to 30%, are targeted for Cal State students, whose fees next year could climb to an average of $1,440 for undergraduates and $1,782 for graduate students under a budget proposal by Chancellor Barry Munitz. The proposed fees are more than double the $708 that the Cal State system charged in 1989.

Munitz’s suggested $2.4-billion 1994-95 spending plan, which will be presented to the board of trustees next week, is 13% more than this year’s budget, and it includes an extra $55 million for faculty and administrative pay raises.

For the first time, Munitz’s budget proposal appears to break from the state’s 1960 Higher Education Master Plan, which states that the top third of California high school graduates are eligible to attend Cal State schools and the top 12% are eligible for UC admission.

That commitment has traditionally meant that money follows enrollments--university officials would predict how many students would be accepted at its campuses, and the Legislature would respond with the appropriate funds.

But the lingering recession has forced deep cuts in higher education. For 1994, Munitz is proposing that one of the system’s guiding budget principles be that “funds provided by the state set the enrollment level.”

UC students could be looking at annual fee increases of $650 or more over the next several years to help the nine-campus system recover from recent funding cuts, according to a long-term budget report made public by UC President Jack W. Peltason this week.

With a $650 increase next year, the average fee would be $4,377, more than double what the system charged in 1989. Students enrolled in UC professional schools could be charged more, the report says.

Although his office and the campuses plan to take a $53-million cut in administrative costs, Peltason said in the report that the fee increases may be unavoidable. The reason, he said, is that Gov. Pete Wilson is willing to support a 3% increase in UC’s overall budget but university officials want nearly an 8% boost--to more than $1.9 billion--in part to pay for nearly $100 million in across-the-board pay increases and merit raises for professors and administrators.

Peltason said the raises are necessary to reverse three years of salary freezes and pay cuts, which have made it more difficult to recruit and retain top-flight faculty and staff. But Andrew Shaw, executive director of the UC Student Assn., said students will wage a “bloody budget battle” next year if their increased fees go into the wallets of professors and administrators.

“While we’re sympathetic to the situation of salary and staff, I think students have paid more than their fair share to make up for the past few years of cuts,” said Shaw. One solution, he said, would be to make UC professors teach more and research less.

Stirrings over student fee increases come days before the UC and CSU boards are scheduled to meet in a historic joint session in Sacramento to discuss the future of higher education. During the next two months, both boards will forward budget recommendations to Wilson, who will deliver his full state spending plan to the Legislature in January.