Cal State Trustees Approve Increasing Fees to $1,584 a Year

Acting at the direction of state legislators, Cal State University trustees approved a 10% student fee increase Wednesday for the next academic year, bringing the basic annual bill at the 20-campus system to $1,584.

The increase is less than half of what trustees had recommended in October, when they sought a 24% raise in the 1994-95 state budget.

Trustees pressed for the larger increase--which would have brought the annual fee to $1,782--as part of their long-term strategy to make students pay charges that are about equal to a third of the cost of their instruction.

But during budget deliberations this summer, Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators set the CSU increase at 10% as part of a budget deal that gave the 247,000-student system $1.55 billion with which to operate this year--about $60 million more than last year.

The increase will take effect for the fall term and is the eighth in a row since 1986, when CSU charged students $573 a year. The fees crept up each year thereafter, but escalated sharply after legislators began making significant budget cuts in 1990.

Although the 10% increase was unanimously approved, university trustees and Chancellor Barry Munitz affirmed their goal to keep pressing for student fee increases until annual charges reach about $2,500, or about a third of the estimated $7,500 cost to educate an undergraduate, spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said.

They also agreed to try to meet the Legislature’s goal of enrolling 250,000 students in the next academic year, about 3,000 more than now attend CSU campuses. In recent years, however, some campuses have been forced to limit enrollment and close classes because of budget cuts.

Besides the basic fee, CSU students pay $200 a year in special campus activity fees.