UC Student Regent Alfredo Mireles Jr. and UC Student Regent-designate Jonathan Stein spoke of impending tuition hikes facing students if they do not voice their opinions at Wednesday night’s ASUC Senate meeting.
The UC Board of Regents will be making long-term financial decisions during the next five months and is looking for alternative solutions to tuition hikes to allay the budget woes facing the UC system, they said.
The regents are looking at a plan that would help cover the $2.4 billion shortfall the UC faces over the next five years by raising revenue by 16 percent annually. However, Mireles said that the regents have not adopted a plan yet and are only discussing possibilities at this point.
Under the plan, which was discussed at the board’s September meeting, $1.4 billion could come solely from tuition increases, especially given some regents’ predictions that any increased contribution from the state is unlikely, according to Mireles.
Some regents at the board’s September meeting rejected the potential plan to cover the revenue through tuition hikes, he said.
“We had regents for the first time who said, ‘We can’t keep going down that road,’” said Mireles.
The rising cost for students to attend the UC is the product of continued state divestment from the university, Stein said, adding that the UC has lost its “historical role as leader of access and affordability.”
Stein said that there is a political action committee being formed to lobby for funding for higher education in Sacramento and that the regents are also looking into gaining unrestricted funds from corporations.
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AB 131 students will
be the lower with min. GPA of 2.0-2.6 for their free State financial
aid. Out-of-State and Foreign Nationals will be more heavily recruited
to pay for the budget deficit, while AB 131 will “place out” and “price
out” Middle Class Legal Residents Students due to their favored status
while diminishing aid for Legal Students.
The UC Regents CAN.RAISE.TUITION.ALL.THEY.WANT!
there are other colleges to go to that are more welcoming and better!
The Regents will find out that people are going elsewhere and not paying the ridiculous tuition. It’s like paying for a parking permit, you are not guaranteed a parking spot much like you are not guaranteed a job upon graduation.
It should be pointed out, you might go to a different school and make less, but you pay back less and start saving easier than paying a high tuition at UC and spend all your income paying it back with interest, with nothing left to save. Education is like any industry, it’s all about making money. The best thing a student can do to stick their middle finger to the UC, is go somewhere else, pay little and save enough to live well, that is revenge.
The UC is already in trouble. The most expensive public school in the country and still raising tuition with no end in sight? I hear a Federal investigation is under way…(cue the paper shredders!)
The beast must be fed…pay up cal kiddies.
From the state auditor’s report:
http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2010-105.pdf
$1 billion/year vanishes into thin air at UCOP every year and Yudof will not provide more than two words to tell you what he spends it on: miscellaneous services.
To put it in perspective:
UC’s annual budget is ~ $22 billion.
Yudof wipes his a$$ with 4.5% of that every year, and laughs in your face while the regents raise tuition.
Recent CA state reductions in funding have been ~ 500-650 million.
Yudof burns through twice that much every year w/no oversight at all, and laughs in your face while the regents raise tuition.