Shortly after California voters passed Proposition 30 — a proposition that would have increased student fees by 20 percent had it failed — UC officials stopped discussing an undergraduate tuition increase. However, the Regents are still considering raising fees for the 600 graduate degrees offered at UCs. This would increase graduate school fees by an average of 7 percent. Depending on the campus and the program, fees would have increased by 1.2 to 35 percent. At UC Irvine, this would increase graduate nursing program fees by $2,700.
A statement released by the UC Office of the President said that the governor needed more time to fully understand the proposed increases.
In a Nov. 13 report by the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Governor gets CSU, UC increases halted,” Brown explained that the timing was not right to consider fee hikes.
“I think there may well be alternative ways to achieve the objective of getting students to be more diligent, to graduate on time, to repeat fewer courses and to otherwise make their years as productive and effective as possible,” he said.
Brown, who campaigned for Proposition 30 in the past election, promised in his campaign that there would be no tuition hikes for students for the year.
University officials were still considering fee increases regardless of Proposition 30’s victory, but delayed their vote per Brown’s request.
Talks of raising tuition levels will be rescheduled for a future meeting at an undetermined date. However, Brown expressed his hopes to trustees that alternative solutions may be reached to improve the university system without fee hikes, claiming that “taxpayers got out of their comfort zone” to vote for Prop. 30, so universities have to be ready to follow suit.
“You’ve got to have the classes available, and some of that may have to come online,” Brown said to the UC Board of Trustees on Nov. 13 . “Knowledge increasingly is available online. That principle will be increasingly brought to bear on the university.”
On Nov. 6, Brown urged the CSU Board of Trustees in its meeting to postpone increasing tuition on students who are still in school after being eligible for graduation or who take more classes than needed.
The fee increases would have allowed CSUs to accept around 18,000 additional students next year.
