Calif. bill would cap fees for college students
The legislation would establish a baseline student fee for the 2011-12 academic year at each of California's three public higher education systems—the University of California, California State University and the California Community Colleges—and would cap subsequent fee increases at 5 percent a year. The schools serve a combined 3.5 million students annually.
The measure also would require that fees remain constant throughout a student's enrollment, so year-to-year increases would apply only to newly enrolled students.
"We have to get universities to realize that students and their families are not walking ATM machines," said the bill's author, Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter. "The goal is to take the erratic nature out of student fee increases so that families can budget for college and the universities get better at their own budgeting."
Over the past five years, state budget cuts have caused student fees to rise by 61 percent at UC, to $8,000 per year for resident undergraduates, and 68 percent at CSU, to $4,900 per year. Fees at the state's 110 community colleges dropped during that period but shot up 30 percent this year.
Those increases have prompted
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