UC to Hike Undergraduate Fees $620 : Education: New students at the system’s professional schools will have to pay $2,000 more under a plan approved by the regents.

Undergraduate students at the University of California will have to pay $620 more for their education beginning next fall under a plan approved by the Board of Regents on Friday.

The “share-the-pain” budget plan also calls for imposing a $2,000 special fee on new students enrolling in the professional schools of law, medicine, business, dentistry and veterinary medicine.

The fee increases came at the same time the university announced “equity adjustments” for four chancellors and merit increases for UC employees making less than $125,000 a year.

“In order for us to attract good leadership . . . we need to be competitive with other academic institutions,” regents Chairman Howard Leach said.

UC President Jack Peltason defended the merit raises, saying that UC faculty members’ salaries are 12% behind those of their colleagues at comparable institutions.

“If that persists over a long period of time, we will lose the quality of the University of California. We are quite concerned about that,” Peltason said.

“These are very difficult times for everyone; we recognize that,” he said.

Fees for undergraduates have already jumped 125% in four years to the current average of $3,700. The increase approved Friday would bring undergraduate fees to about $4,300 a year. The money generated by the increase would pay for faculty and staff merit increases, financial aid, new buildings, equipment and instructional costs.

“In many ways, students are becoming numb to it,” Scott Kamena, chairman of UC Berkeley’s Student Senate, said of the fee increases. “We’re obviously not too delighted about any kind of fee increase.”

Only if the money goes toward financial aid in the form of grants and eligibility requirements for financial aid changes will students be able to bear the increases, Kamena said.

Peltason said the merit raises and equity adjustments were already approved in budget meetings last year for the 1993-1994 budget.