Editor:

For graduate and professional students at UCSD, a 40-percent tuition increase will make traveling to a conference to market your work or interning at a prestigious firm to distinguish your resume a luxury of the past. Compared to the 2001-02 academic year, California resident graduate students will pay $4,017 more in tuition, and nonresidents will pay $8,114 more. Tuition for professional students has doubled in some cases, reflecting an average increase of $4,081.

Across disciplines, there is tremendous variability in the funding packages that graduate students receive. In addition to taking courses and writing their thesis, graduate students must work as research assistants, teach at community colleges, work as teaching assistants (sometimes for more than one class) or as lecturers, or take out loans to pay tuition and make ends meet. Having to work additional hours to pay for tuition leaves many graduate students with very little time for pursuing opportunities that will enhance their vitae and thereby distinguish them as top candidates when they begin their job search.

The additional tuition increases being proposed, on top of the 30-percent mid-year increase we were hit with last year, will simply deter students from graduate study in California. Fee increases mean fewer fellowships. Fee increases mean that departments will admit fewer graduate students, which in turn means that there will be a shortage of teaching assistants and larger teaching loads. Fee increases mean that departments will probably not admit foreign students. Fee increases mean impacted classrooms. Thus, fee increases compromise the quality of both graduate and undergraduate education. Why not go to Michigan or Chicago, or even to a private institution where your fees might be waived?

The governor says he’s committed to bringing businesses back to California.

Does he mean it? How can you call for a more educated work force and then freeze folks out of the system? Let’s call on the “”people’s governor”” and our elected representatives to invest in the future of California rather than gouging tomorrow’s industry leaders, top innovators and leading educators right out of California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can be reached by mail at State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814; by phone at (916) 445-2841; or by e-mail at [email protected].

California State Sen. Dede Alpert can be reached at State Capitol, Room 5050, Sacramento, CA 95814; by e-mail at [email protected]; by phone at (619) 645-3090.

California State Assemblyman George Plescia can be reached at State Capitol Building, Room 4009, Sacramento, CA 94249-0075 or by phone at (858) 689-6290.

-Heather Flowe

Vice president external affairs, Graduate Student Association