Pressure Builds for Steeper UC Graduate Fees : Education: Underclassmen say students in the professional schools should pay more because they are likely to earn more. Administrators also favor the idea.

California’s long-running fiscal crisis in higher education is threatening to set brother against brother: University of California students, weary and angry after four years of sharp fee increases, are beginning to turn on each other.

The strain is showing between undergraduates and their more advanced peers enrolled in professional schools for medicine, law, dentistry, management and veterinary science. And the emerging battle centers on one question: Are the professional students getting off too cheaply?

UC undergraduates pay an average of $3,727 a year, while professional school students, who face extra charges imposed on all graduate students, pay slightly more--$4,200.

But some undergraduate leaders, bracing themselves for more fee hikes in the near future, say that the 13% difference is not nearly enough, and they are urging UC regents to sock it to the state’s future doctors, attorneys, dentists, business executives and veterinarians.

They say it is not fair for the professional students, a number of whom can expect to make six-figure incomes, to be paying about the same as underclassmen who leave UC with a fraction of the earning power.

“If you get to the whole crux of the issue, (undergraduate) students are starting to resent it a little,” said Natalie Lera, a political science senior at UC Berkeley.

Lera, who sits on a Berkeley committee that monitors the use of student fees, said that undergraduates have not made this an issue before because they have been preoccupied with their own fees, which have jumped 128% since 1989.

Now, they are “starting to look at the campus as a whole” and are “surprised” to find out that the average sophomore studying sociology is paying only slightly less than the medical school student--who enjoys smaller classes, close ties to the professors and greater access to grants, internships and fellowships.

Lera and other Berkeley undergraduates appeared at the UC regents meeting last month to propose a surcharge on professional school students during the next round of anticipated fee increases for 1994. They suggested splitting the extra money, with half going back to the professional schools and the rest to the campus at which the schools are based.

They also suggested tying the fees of any professional school directly to earning power, limiting yearly increases to no more than 1% of the starting salaries for the previous graduating class.

UC officials, who tried once before to set higher professional school fees, warmly received the undergraduates’ suggestions. School officials are working on their own fee proposal, and have asked each professional school to forward recommendations for potential fee hikes in time for the regents’ next meeting in January.

Nervous professional school students argue that imposing such “differential fees” would be counterproductive for society. They say that it would not only discourage poorer students from becoming doctors and lawyers, but would force any new doctor or attorney to pass up lower-paying community service jobs just to pay off their student debts.

Alex Wong, a third-year law student at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, said imposing extra fees on professional school students may look good politically but would yield little extra money for the $7.3-billion UC system. The 9,185 students enrolled in professional schools on the university’s nine campuses are slightly more than 5% of the entire UC student population.

Wong suspects another motive. “I think the real reason is there is a lot of negative sentiment toward lawyers and doctors, and they are an easy target to hit,” he said.

Whatever the reason, the idea of imposing professional school fees is moving forward, propelled by economic reality. It costs taxpayers about $32,000 to subsidize the education of one UC medical student each year--enough money to pay for an estimated 3.5 undergraduates, UC officials say.

As the state’s share of higher education dollars continues to shrink, many lawmakers and budget analysts are beginning to view that subsidy as inefficient. In his 1993 budget message, Gov. Pete Wilson asked UC to consider “privatizing” one of its four law schools, a move that would wean it from the public purse and free administrators to charge much higher tuition.

Meanwhile, comparisons with similar universities show that professional students at UC are enjoying a clear price advantage over future colleagues. A recent survey shows that UC students were paying an average of $3,300 to $5,300 less each year to get a medical, dentistry, law or MBA degree than it would cost at similar public universities in New York, Michigan, Illinois and Virginia. In a comparison to four universities, UC Davis veterinary students paid $3,850 less.

Mark Oshima, who received an MBA from UCLA this year, said students in his program knew they were getting a “great deal” by paying $3,500 a year for instruction that would cost them up to $20,000 at private schools of the same reputation. “The term I heard a lot was: ‘We’re getting a great bang for the buck.’

“In economics, your market price is people’s willingness to pay,” said Oshima, a management consultant from Walnut Creek who told regents last month he supports the higher professional school fees. “In this case, there’s a huge economic rent (gap) that happens because people’s willingness to pay is many times higher than what they are actually paying.”

Oshima’s alma mater has learned that lesson. Business schools at UCLA, Irvine and Berkeley have instituted “market-based” fees by charging part-time or corporate-sponsored students several times more than the normal student rate for the same MBA degree.

Daytime students at UCLA pay about $4,000 for their classes while mid- to senior-level executives are charged $22,000 to attend classes on Friday and Saturday. At Irvine, regular students pay $4,754 but part-time executives are charged $20,000--a price that also buys them a portable computer, software and one overseas class trip.

“The question in all these cases is, who is going to pay for the costs of somebody’s education?” said Carol Scott, associate dean of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Scott said business executives are charged five times more for the same degree because they are “a population of relatively well-paid professionals whose companies could support them going back to school, and a large state subsidy was not appropriate.”

The idea of doing the same for students destined to become tomorrow’s doctors, dentists and executives is not new. Last year, UC administrators proposed the extra professional fees but regents rejected the notion. Wong successfully fought the proposal as student regent at the time, and the UC Student Assn. opposed treating professional students differently.

Yet Wong said it is a “90% to 95% probability” that the regents, under increasing political and economic pressure, will approve the extra professional fees in January.

Wong said he expects the extra fees, which will be phased in over several years, to add $5,000 a year to law school and $6,000 a year to medical school; Scott at UCLA said her department has suggested up to a $3,000 annual increase for the MBA program. UC officials say they have not settled on anything.

But unlike last year’s debate, in which students appeared to be united, some undergraduates will be cheering UC officials on. Kirk L. Knutsen, a higher education expert with the California Research Bureau in Sacramento, said such in-fighting is only to be expected.

“Where a group is so put upon, the tendency is to split within itself and begin fighting over the scraps,” he said.

College Fees: Who Pays More

Here is a comparison of the average annual tuition and fees charged graduate and undergraduate students at the University of California and four other public universities. The comparison schools were selected because they are also used by UC officials in determining faculty salaries. The last line shows how much more the comparison schools charge, based on an average of the comparison schools’ fees.

UNDERGRAD. MEDICINE DENTISTRY MBA THE COMPARISON SCHOOLS: *Univ. of Illinois $3,506 $7,238 $5,652 $5,016 *Univ. of Michigan $5,119 $14,275 $11,683 $13,313 *State Univ. of New York $3,554 $9,279 $9,289 $4,776 *Univ. of Virginia $4,350 $8,730 NA $8,600 * AVERAGE for comparison schools $4,132 $9,881 $8,875 $7,926 *University of California $3,727 $4,535 $3,963 $4,185 * Difference between UC and comparison schools’ AVERAGE 11% 118% 124% 89%

LAW THE COMPARISON SCHOOLS: *Univ. of Illinois $5,056 *Univ. of Michigan $12,475 *State Univ. of New York $5,839 *Univ. of Virginia $7,524 * AVERAGE for comparison schools $7,728 *University of California $4,425 * Difference between UC and comparison schools’ AVERAGE 75%

Source: UC Budget for Current Operations.