CSU Trustees May Raise Student Fees 10%

By Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, June 10, 2010

California State University trustees may ignore a recommendation by their own staff to raise student fees by 5 percent next week, opting instead to boost the price by 10 percent, board Chairman Herb Carter told The Chronicle Wednesday.

"I'm not sure that the board will be willing to raise the fees by 5 percent, then run the risk of having to come back in September and raise the fees again" if state lawmakers don't come through on a plan to make more funds available to CSU, said Carter, whose Board of Trustees will vote on a fee hike in Long Beach on June 18.

The last time CSU trustees did back-to-back fee increases - just last summer - students slapped them with a lawsuit that claimed a bait-and-switch on the cost of attending the university. The suit, Donselman vs. CSU, is making its way through the courts.

"We don't want to be in that position again," Carter said. "We can always reverse the fee, if funds are made available. But students should have as much warning as possible" on fees.

Trustees raised fees by 10 percent in May 2009. Two months later, they raised fees by 20 percent, which led to the lawsuit.

Caught off guard

Yet student representatives - who had thought they scored a victory when CSU staff recommended limiting the new fee increase to 5 percent - expressed surprise when told what Carter had said.

"That would be a first. I haven't seen the board ignore a recommendation of the staff," said Steve Dixon, outgoing president of the California State Student Association, which represents more than 300,000 CSU students but is not a party to the Donselman lawsuit.

"I'd be disappointed" at a 10 percent increase, Dixon said, vowing to take the fight to the Legislature.

The smaller increase would raise the basic price to attend CSU next fall by $204, to $4,230 per year, from the current $4,026, excluding other mandatory fees.

The larger increase would raise the basic price to $4,429.

CSU, like the University of California, has seen its costs soar and its state support plummet over the last two years. The cost of running the CSU system rose by $135 million, while state funds dropped by $625 million, the university says.

Both the CSU trustees and their staff agree that the university desperately needs the $153 million that a 10 percent fee increase would give them next year.

CSU has already turned away nearly 20,000 qualified students in the last two years, said spokeswoman Claudia Keith. Almost all employees have taken a 10 percent pay cut through furloughs two days each month. And it is the rare student who hasn't had trouble getting into core classes because so many have been cut across CSU's 23 campuses.

Alternate plan

But the staff, which is proposing the smaller fee increase, is relying on an optimistic plan from the state Assembly to make up the difference in state funding.

That plan, by Assembly Speaker John Peréz, D-Los Angeles, involves borrowing $8.7 billion in bonds, to be repaid with interest over 20 years from a new tax on oil extracted in California.

"This proposal holds out a possibility that is worth consideration by the (CSU) Board," Robert Turnage, CSU's assistant vice chancellor for budget, told the trustees in his written recommendation for a 5 percent fee increase.

But it's not clear that the plan could succeed. Republican lawmakers are likely to try to block any new tax plan, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't keen on new taxes either.

The governor's spokesman, Aaron McLear, called Peréz's plan only so much "legal gymnastics."

Even Dixon, who just graduated from Humboldt State with a degree in economics and finance, said, "I've never heard of half the stuff they're trying to pull."

And yet, he and other students who spent the better part of the school year lobbying lawmakers to restore funding to higher education, believe Peréz's plan offers a real way out for universities to stop cutting courses and laying off instructors.

If the CSU trustees do raise fees by 10 percent, Dixon said he would not lash out at them. He would head to Sacramento.

"I would hold the legislators' feet to the fire," he said. "They need to pony up the other 5 percent."

Meanwhile, the CSU trustees will also vote on their staff's recommendation to raise graduate student fees by 5 percent, and on lifting an $11,160 cap on nonresident student fees.