UC to raise tuition for nonresidents
Thousands of University of California students from out of state can expect their annual tuition to rise by $978 next fall, after a UC regents committee approved the increase over the objections of two candidates for governor.
The full Board of Regents is expected to adopt the 3.5 percent increase for nonresident undergraduates Thursday at its meeting at UCLA. The higher price tag would raise nearly $35 million for the university and bring out-of-state tuition and fees to $41,622 a year.
UC officials say the increase is needed because Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed giving UC a 3 percent increase in state funds for next year instead of the 4 percent that the university requested. UC officials are still lobbying state lawmakers for more, and say that if they fail, they will ask the regents in May to approve higher tuition for state residents as well.
Dozens of students joined Democratic gubernatorial candidates John Chiang and Delaine Eastin on Wednesday in speaking against all UC price hikes.
“I urge you to suspend any consideration of tuition or fee increases until 2019,” Chiang, the state treasurer, told the regents finance committee.
Eastin, a regent during her years as state schools chief in the 1990s, said tuition is becoming prohibitive for too many students.
“You find kids that are couch surfing” to make ends meet, Eastin said.
An out-of-state student who identified herself as Emma told the regents that she has rheumatoid arthritis, and that paying nearly $1,000 more in tuition would force her to cut back on the medicine she needs.
“I shouldn’t have to make this choice,” she said.
Another student, Aisha, said her parents would be able to afford to send only one child to school — and it would be her brother.
“I might have to go back to Pakistan,” she said, and chastised the regents for treating nonresident students as “cash cows” for the university.
Nonresidents pay three times the $13,900 in tuition and fees that Californians pay, and UC has given the higher-paying students an increasingly warm welcome in recent years.
Nonresident enrollment has risen by 71 percent since 2013, to 37,217 students this year, with two-thirds of them from other countries.
“These additional revenues are critical to 2018-19 campus operating budgets,” finance officials told the regents in recommending the higher price.
They said three campuses benefit the most from nonresident tuition: UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, where the added revenue pays for a Student Learning Center at which 9,000 undergraduates find academic support.
Also on Wednesday, a regents committee approved higher fees for 24 professional degree programs, including a new master’s program in “serious games” at UC Santa Cruz.