Freeze the fees: Sacramento State students protest CSU tuition hike
It's about to get harder for Kendall Ward to pay for college. Ward is a fourthyear political science major at Sacramento State and is set to graduate next spring.
With rent, car payments, bills and, now, a looming 6% tuition hike, Ward has contemplated taking a semester off because she can no longer “afford school.”
“Having that tuition increase is going to make it harder to get an education,” Ward said. “It shouldn't be like that. It should be easy. It should be accessible.”
Ward was one of more than 400,000 students bracing for the California
State University system's newest tuition hike — some of them Wednesday protesting the change from eight months ago at Sacramento State and 22 other campuses across the state.
More than 100 protesters took to Sacramento State's library quad, calling for the raise to be frozen. Students later marched up to Sacramento Hall to deliver flyers demanding the university to support a tuition freeze, slamming them on a receptionist's desk in the President's Office.
Tuition at CSUs will rise by 6% annually in the fall. But, over the span of five years, tuition will be 34% higher after the CSU Board of Trustees voted for the hike 15-5 in September.
In-state undergraduate students will see their education bills increase by $342 in the next school year. Compared with this academic year, tuition in the 2028-29 school year is expected to be $1,940 higher with the series of increases, according to CalMatters.
For example, an undergraduate student taking more than six units at a Cal State campus pays $5,742 per academic year. In five years it would cost $7,682 more for each in-state student.
Trustees in favor of the hike said the increase would provide financial stability for CSU amid a $1.5 billion structural deficit. Trustees, in a statement released in September, said this change will “help bring stability to the university's budget.”
The tuition increase, they said, would generate $148 million in revenue its first year. The CSU said that $49 million will go to “financial aid support for students.”
Additionally, the CSU said the hike will not impact the “60% of CSU undergraduate students whose tuition is fully covered through grants, scholarships, waivers and other non-loan aid.”
But students like Ward don't believe the increase is justified. College is already expensive, especially with additional fees, she said.