Terence+Chea

Terence Chea, UC Board of Regents approves 9.3 percent fee hike,”Daily News, 05/07/2009 09:56:57 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California Board of Regents voted Thursday to raise student fees by 9.3 percent, the latest move to offset state budget cuts to the 10-campus system. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_12322430 The regents also approved the appointments of two new chancellors — Linda Katehi at UC Davis and Susan Desmond-Hellmann at UC San Francisco — but drew fire from a state lawmaker who called their compensation excessive. The fee increase, approved by a 17-4 vote, is one of several measures aimed at cutting the university's $450 million budget shortfall. In recent months, UC has frozen administrator salaries, imposed hiring freezes, reduced faculty recruitment and cut freshman enrollment. The increase in student fees, which have more than doubled over the past seven years, are expected to generate about $152 million, with about one-third set aside for financial aid. Fees will increase by $662 for California resident undergraduates, who should expect to pay about $8,700 in fees for the coming academic year. Fees will rise $750 for in-state graduate academic students and $654 for most in-state professional students. Tuition for nonresident undergraduates will increase 10 percent to about $22,000. UC officials said the fee hikes will be largely offset by expanded financial aid programs and bigger tax credits included in the $787 billion federal stimulus package. Under the university's new Blue and Gold Opportunity rom families earning less than $60,000 will not have to pay any fees. "I want to reassure our students that this year we will have an extraordinary amount of additional financial resources available to cover the higher fees," UC President Mark Yudof said in a statement. But some students said the fee hikes will create hardship for middle-income students and make low-income students overly dependent on financial aid that fluctuates with economic conditions. "The high-fee, high-aid model is bad for students, bad for the UC and bad for the state," said Lucero Chavez, a UC Berkeley law student who heads the University of California Student Association. "This model is most harmful to middle-income students. It translates into more loan debt and a lot more work hours."