Medical, Law Students Face UC Fee Hike

Future doctors, lawyers and business executives take note: University of California officials are hoping to charge students entering the system’s five professional schools next year $2,000 more than other graduate and undergraduate students.

The proposal for the so-called differential fees, which administrators expect to present at the January meeting of the UC regents, represents a dramatic departure from the system’s practice of charging all students--from undergraduates studying sociology to third-year law students--about the same amount to attend classes on its nine campuses.

University officials are under pressure to break with that tradition, however, because several years of state budget cuts have forced them to find alternative sources of money, UC spokesman Michael Lassiter said.

Lassiter said professional-school students are being singled out for the differential fee because comparisons show their peers at selected institutions pay 75% to 118% more for the same degrees.

In addition, he said, it costs taxpayers much more to subsidize their education--$32,000 for the average medical student, more than three times the subsidy for an undergraduate. Budget analysts have begun to question the fairness and efficiency of that subsidy, especially because professional school students make more money in the job market and are better able to pay off student loans than other UC graduates.

The proposed $2,000 differential fees would be charged only to the 2,400 students who will enter the schools of medicine, veterinary medicine, business, law and dentistry next fall, Lassiter said. The 7,900 students already enrolled in those programs would pay the lower, current fees ranging from $4,000 to $4,500, according to UC budget documents.

Lassiter also emphasized that approving the differential charges for professional schools will not relieve the financial pressure to impose fee increases on the other UC students. UC President Jack Peltason has projected that increases of $600 to $650 a year per student will be needed in the immediate future.

“It’s not going to negate the need for a general fee increase, no,” he said. “You’re only going to net about $2 million out of this. That’s hardly going to solve your budget problem.”

As state funding for all colleges and universities has shrunk, the UC regents have spread fee increases relatively evenly among the 160,000 students in the system. As a result, the fees have increased 128% since 1989, from $1,634 to $3,727 this year.

Last year, regents rejected a proposal to increase the professional school fees by $1,000 and instead added a $50 increase to everyone’s fee.

But the prospect of yet another round of increases has prompted some undergraduates to urge that university officials ask for more from professional-school students. And some professional schools, such as the MBA programs at UCLA and UC Irvine, are already charging returning executives fees sharply higher than those paid by full-time students for the same classes.

Those who oppose differential fees say they would further strap future doctors and lawyers with student loans, adding pressure to overlook careers in relatively low-paying public service work and take more lucrative jobs to retire their student debt.

Lassiter said school administrators may address that concern by also proposing that professional school graduates who go into public service be forgiven their loans.

Despite that wrinkle, Nick Endres, vice president of the UC Students Assn., said Wednesday that the student group will oppose the proposed differential fees.

“We’re all students and eventually any one of us could be in this position,” said Endres, a physics undergraduate at UC San Diego and vice president of the UC Students Assn. “A significant amount of undergrads are expecting to go into professional schools, eventually. In general, students are concerned about students at all different levels.”