Legislators to vote on tuition freeze for UC, CSU

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A possible tuition freeze for both the UC and CSU systems is set to be voted on Tuesday when the California state legislature meets to pass the final state budget.

The UC Student Association posted on its Facebook page Sunday that state Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles — author of the recent California Middle Class Scholarship Act — had secured a tuition freeze for both the UC and CSU in the state budget with an additional $120 million in funds for both systems. If passed as part of the budget, tuition will not increase for students for the 2012-13 school year.

The decision to vote on the tuition freeze comes on the heels of the June 15 approval of a $92.1 billion state budget just before the legislature’s constitutional deadline that left the state with a $7 million dollar gap and conflicts over welfare cuts.

Charlie Eaton, financial secretary of UAW Local 2865, which represents nearly 12,000 graduate student instructors, readers and tutors teaching on UC campuses, said that though the tuition freeze will be included in the final state budget, the debt privatization for UC construction will not be included in Tuesday’s vote.

“I think this shows that student activism in the late year is making a huge difference we have changed the conversation about who should pay for higher education,the 1 percent or students whose tuition is way too high.” Eaton said. “We need to keep organizing to make sure this tuition freeze goes into effect and roll tuition back.”

UAW Local 2865 and other unions continue to call on students to rally before the budget vote to advocate against any possible tuition hikes for the California higher education system.

Members of the UC Board of Regents and UC student leaders have been lobbying the state capitol for the past few months to convince lawmakers to increase university funding by $125 million and induce a “tuition buy-out.” The board is still scheduled to vote on a proposed 6 percent fee increase at its meeting in July.

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Archived Comments (8)

  1. Berkeleyprotest says:

    decrease tuition to freedom!!

  2. I_h8_disqus says:

    I am glad that the legislature is at least considering this.  Now we will at least know something about each legislator by their vote.  The article gave me a good laugh at Charlie Eaton’s expense.  I got a real kick out of how he tried to say this was students vs. the 1%.  There are a lot more Californians that the 1% who pay taxes, and we pay a lot of taxes.  So the rich folks against the students are the legislators who have all our tax money.  This is students against the legislature.  The legislature just likes to spend our money on pretty trains and various other non-essentials instead of on the future of California.  Seriously, we need to cut the pensions and benefits for legislators.  They take this job for power, and after they can no longer keep their seats, they use the job to make a lot of money.  They don’t need a pension or benefits for the rest of their lives.

  3. University Of Fail says:

    LOL, if the Regents were competent this would never have come to a vote.
    OTOH, the legislature is just a bunch of grandstanding clowns.
    The real problem: the gov’t doesn’t actually represent the interests of the mass constituency. Instead we get bullshit game-playing from all sides.

    Historically speaking, what happens when elites shit on the peasants year after year?

    • Guest says:

      this is great news

    • libsrclowns says:

      LOL, key words are,

      “A possible tuition freeze…”

      With the Lib cabal in SACTO headed by Moonbeam, don’t celebrate yet.

      A new study by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Pew Center for the States reveales that states came up a combined total of $1.38 trillion short between assets and what’s needed to cover public sector pensions and health care benefits in 2010, with most continuing to lose ground. 

      California alone came up 25% short on its contribution for pensions and 71% short on the contribution required to fund retiree health benefits that same year.

      Until we vote these incompetent Libs out, Cali is hosed.