UC Will Hike Fees by Up to 10%

Despite appeals from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and protests from students, University of California regents on Wednesday voted to raise fees 8% for undergraduate students and 10% for those in graduate programs for the next school year.

The increases, which were expected as part of a previous budget agreement with the governor, mean a fifth consecutive year of fee hikes for the more than 200,000 undergraduate and graduate students in the university’s 10-campus system. Trustees of the California State University system recently approved the same percentages of fee increases for its students.

Under the plan approved Wednesday, undergraduates who are California residents will pay mandatory systemwide fees of $6,633 next year, up from $6,141 this year. With the additional charges imposed by each campus, in-state undergraduates will pay average total fees next year of $7,294, up from $6,802 for the current year. Those figures do not include room, board and books.

The increases could be modified if legislators, when considering the state budget next year, approve more -- or less -- funding than expected.

Nunez, a Democrat from Los Angeles, urged the board to put off the vote on fee increases until January, saying that a delay would give him and other legislators more time to negotiate a better deal on the state funding. Nunez, who is a regent by virtue of his elected office, pointed to Wednesday’s announcement of a brighter economic outlook for next year by the state legislative analyst’s office.

“There is a certain point in time when on student fees, we have to say enough is enough,” Nunez said. “And I don’t think there’s anything illogical about waiting until the governor releases his budget in January and see if we can negotiate a better deal.”

But UC President Robert C. Dynes and other regents urged the board to proceed, with the proviso that the hikes could be rolled back if more funding is provided, in order to give students and their families more time to plan.

UC officials said that most financially needy students are unlikely to feel the increase, since one-third of the revenue raised by it will be returned to financial aid for such students. For graduate students, that figure is 45%. The regents also approved a proposal Wednesday to cover half of the fee increase for students with family incomes up to $100,000, a plan aimed at helping middle-income students as well as the financially needy.

UC has seen several years of tight budgets that have caused faculty salaries to slip below par with comparable institutions; also, student fees have risen and cuts have been made in student services and maintenance, among other areas. But UC officials said last year’s budget agreement with the governor has helped stabilize the university’s funding and prevented further cuts.

The regents voted 17 to 2 for the fee increase as part of UC’s $2.97-billion state-funded budget for 2006-07. That budget represents an increase of 4.6% from the current year and includes funding for enrollment growth of 5,000 students, including 1,000 graduate students.

Under the agreement, academic graduate students -- those who are not enrolled in professional schools such as law, medicine or business -- will pay 10% more next year, or about $9,398 in total fees, including campus charges. Regent George Marcus on Wednesday urged regents to eliminate the increases for academic graduate students, but that proposal was narrowly defeated.

Fees for most medical, law and business schools are already higher than those for the other graduate programs and are set to go up by between 5% and 10% next year.

Students were upset that their pleas for no hikes did not persuade the regents. Several students were ejected from the meeting room at the UC Berkeley campus after interrupting the session with shouted complaints about the fees, and, at one point, rising to sing a carnival song while one told the board that the meeting amounted to a “three-ring circus.”

Marwa Rifahie, a student at UC Davis, told regents she works 25 hours a week at two jobs to help pay her way, and urged them to vote against the increases. “This is devastating for many of us,” she said.

With the latest increase, total fees for California resident undergraduates will have risen 89% between the 2001-02 and 2006-07 school years.

The budget vote came on the same day that regents gave final approval to a plan to boost all employee salaries to market levels within a decade, saying that years of tight state funding have left the salaries on average 15% below those of comparable public and private universities.

Late Wednesday, UC announced that a regents committee had endorsed merit increases averaging 2.5% for about 20 top administrators, including Dynes, whose salary would be boosted to $405,000, if approved by the full board today.

The university has come under criticism from legislators and others in recent days for spending millions of dollars on bonuses and pay hikes for top executives. UC officials have defended the spending as necessary to attract and keep the best administrators.

But Dynes said Wednesday the university could do a better job of explaining the issue and promised to be more open about executive pay. He said such approved salaries will now be put on a website and that the staff will inform regents of the total compensations.

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Timeline

UCI Medical Center’s liver transplant program:

1993: The program begins.

1999: The 100th liver transplant is performed.

2001: Dr. David Imagawa suffers a heart attack and stops doing transplants, leaving Dr. Sean Cao as the only full-time liver transplant surgeon.

2002: The program performs only eight liver transplants, failing to meet the federal requirement of 12 annually. By now, top hospital officials are aware that the program has been turning down an abnormally high number of donated livers offered for its patients.

2003: The liver refusals continue apace, with no increase in the number of transplants.

May 2004: Medi-Cal pulls the program’s certification because the hospital is not performing enough transplants to maintain proficiency and its patient survival rate falls below minimum standards.

July 2004: Cao leaves the program. Two surgeons from UC San Diego fill in part time.

November 2005: Medicare pulls certification, leaving UC Irvine little choice but to shut down the program.

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Los Angeles Times

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Compiled by staff writer Alan Zarembo