UC Impasse Ends With Fee Increase

SAN FRANCISCO — A day after deadlocking in a preliminary vote, University of California regents on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to raise undergraduate student fees by 14% for the coming school year, the third increase for students in 18 months.

With little discussion and few students present, the regents voted 14 to 2 to raise systemwide fees by $700, to $5,684, for California resident undergraduates. In-state UC graduate students will pay $6,269, up 20% or $1,050 from this year. All students pay additional campus fees and other costs.

Out-of-state students will face 20% hikes, and those at certain UC professional schools, including law, business, medicine and film, will pay 23% to 34% more, varying by school.

The new fees take effect almost immediately for students enrolling in the university’s summer programs.

Several regents said the increases were necessary, given the state’s fiscal crisis. The hikes come on top of undergraduate fee increases of about 40% between December 2002 and July 2003.

“The raising of fees now is unavoidable,” said regent Gerald L. Parsky, a politically prominent California businessman who, in a separate action, was chosen chairman of the university’s governing board Thursday. “I’m not happy about it, but it’s unavoidable.”

Others, including Ward Connerly, who voted against the fee hikes in Wednesday’s 5-5 committee decision, switched position overnight. Connerly said he had decided the increases were necessary in order to show support for UC President Robert C. Dynes and a long-term funding agreement the UC leader and his California State University counterpart struck last week with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In that deal, the universities agreed to significant cuts in the 2004-05 budget in exchange for the promise of better funding in the future. The arrangement included the fee increases passed Thursday by UC regents and a 14% hike approved Wednesday by Cal State trustees that would bring average undergraduate Cal State fees to $2,334.

The agreement also calls for undergraduate fees at both universities to go up 8% more in each of the next two years. Graduate fees would rise an additional 10% each of those years.

Two board members, outgoing student regent Matt Murray and regent George Marcus, opposed the increases, earning plaudits from the handful of students in the room.

“It’s incredibly important to have voices saying that the budget discussions underway in Sacramento will end up burdening the people who can least afford it -- students, the middle class and others -- in lieu of tax increases for the wealthy,” said Murray, a UC Berkeley undergraduate. “I refuse to be a part of that.”

In Sacramento, meanwhile, legislators who opposed the deal between the governor and UC and Cal State leaders are trying to restore some funding to the universities for the coming year. On Thursday, despite the regents’ vote, a Senate Education subcommittee voted to decrease the amount of the fee increase calculated as part of the budget from 14% to 10%. The university boards set the fees, but the Legislature approves the institutions’ overall state funding, including a certain amount of revenue from fees.

In other action Thursday, the regents chose Parsky, a prominent Republican who heads President Bush’s California campaign, to become board chairman on July 1. Richard C. Blum, a billionaire investor and well-known Democrat who is married to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, will become vice chairman the same day.

Blum joked that the appointments of the two will “let the world see that this is a nonpartisan effort.”

Parsky, who is considered a centrist and consensus-builder by other regents, will replace San Diego Padres owner John J. Moores as the board’s chairman. Moores sparked a statewide controversy last fall when he released a report that criticized UC Berkeley for admitting students whom Moores described as underqualified. He was reprimanded by the board in March for accusing UC in a Forbes magazine article of racial discrimination against Asian Americans in admissions decisions.

Parsky described Moores on Thursday as a friend and a man he said had the university’s interests at heart. But Parsky also said he would try to be careful to express views that reflect a consensus of the members.