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Updated Sept. 15, 8:17 a.m.
California State University trustees voted Wednesday to increase tuition by 6% each year over the next five years, which means students will pay 34% more for their classes by fall 2028.
Trustees voted 15-5 to approve the multi-year tuition proposal, which had been opposed by students, faculty members and organizations from all corners of the state. Crowds showed up in Long Beach this week to protest the proposal, a larger repeat of the rally held at the July trustee meeting, when the plan was first discussed.
The tuition increases drew ire for a number of reasons. While 60% of CSU students have tuition completely covered by financial aid, close to 200,000 students will now be impacted by the trustees’ decision. And it also comes after the trustees recently approved a salary and benefits package for the new CSU chancellor, Mildred Garcia, that’s just under $1 million a year.
Many, like Sacramento State senior Leila Cormier, made their distaste of the proposal’s potential fallout clear at yesterday’s public comment period, which lasted several hours.
“The majority of CSU students are from traditionally marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds, students who look like me,” Cormier said. “You are essentially asking students who are already at a disadvantage to pay more, and most of you never even attended a CSU — is your goal to lock out people of color and deny them an education?”
Tuition increase intended to address $1.5 billion shortfall
Student tuition makes up 40% of the CSU system’s operating revenue, and the increases are an attempt to close its nearly $1.5 billion budget shortfall, news of which came out in a 70-page May report. According to a presentation given Wednesday, the CSU system anticipates a gain of $24 million in revenue from new enrollment tuition and $148 million from the tuition rate increase in the 2024-25 academic year.
“I know it's tough to do this, we don't like it, it's difficult — it's really difficult when we are so proud of our affordability and accessibility,” trustee Jack McGrory said at the meeting. “But we've got to make these numbers work and we've got to do something long-term that makes sense that continues the quality of education that we have on these 23 campuses.”
The CSU system last increased tuition in 2017, raising it $270 to $5,742 a year. By the end of the five-year period, the price of tuition will have grown just under $2,000 from this academic year — a 34% increase.
Courtesy of the California State University
The proposal has changed since it was first up for discussion at the trustees’ July meeting, at which point it was originally written to make the 6% yearly tuition increase indefinite.
During the July meeting, public commenters — including Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis and the only present student trustee — all pushed to move the vote to November rather than September to give more students a chance to learn about the potential increases and plan accordingly.
While the trustees agreed to limit an initial schedule of increases to five years, they didn’t agree to push the vote back. The CSU system’s FAQ page about the proposal notes that the September decision “gives students and families an accurate picture of tuition costs during the application period,” which this year is Oct. 1 to Nov. 30.
“A delay in the tuition vote would mean uncertainty during the application and early admission process,” the FAQ reads. The May report also called for tuition increases to be set in place by September.
California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis rises her hand as she addresses the California State University Board of Trustees, students and union members during a meeting at the California State University chancellor's office, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023.AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Other changes to the proposal were suggested on Wednesday, including a shorter time span before the CSU system reassesses the need for tuition increases. That was surfaced by trustee Douglas Faigin, who asked for the proposal to be amended so it would be 6% increases over the next three — not five — years.
After the amendment came up for a vote, it failed unanimously in the Committee of Finance.
Many Sacramento State students, faculty oppose tuition hike
The Sacramento State community’s response to the proposal has been largely unfavorable.
The university’s student governing body, Associated Students, Inc., passed a resolution opposing the proposal last month.
ASI president Nataly Andrade-Dominguez told CapRadio that helping students become aware of potentially rising tuition has been among her top priorities as president. She also critiqued the trustees for discussing an increase in July, when many students are out of classes.
“Students don’t really know the process of how tuition is raised, or why it’s being raised — [they] probably think it’s our university president who is raising tuition, when in fact, it’s not in the jurisdiction of the university president,” she said. “My first reaction was … this felt very like a sneak attack.”
Students, faculty, departments and student groups, along with community organizations and Sacramento-area leaders, all signed an open letter, organized by Students for Quality Education, opposing the tuition increases.
“If you go to any CSU campus right now and ask 10 students if they knew tuition was increasing, nine will tell you that they didn’t know,” said Sacramento State sophomore Michael Lee-Chang, a member of the university’s SQE chapter. “I got that number talking to a thousand students at Sac State trying to collect signatures for our open letter.”
Margarita Berta-Ávila is the vice president for the university’s chapter of the California Faculty Association and a professor of education at Sacramento State.
She signed the open letter, and said it’s important for faculty to stand in solidarity with students, many of whom are people of color working multiple jobs to attend school and support their families.
“You’re putting students in a situation where they’re going to have to probably work more hours, and we know the impact of that with respect to their schooling and learning conditions,” she said. “[This is] perpetuating systemic marginalization of students … you're setting up a way to push students out of having access [to the CSU].”
Sacramento State is currently the fourth-most diverse campus in the Western United States according to a U.S. News & World Report analysis from last year, and 85% of the campus’s students receive financial aid.
What’s next
College students, top row from left, Angelmarie Taylor, Randy Santiago, and Antwon Taylor, react as the California State University Board of Trustees calls for a motion to increase tuition fees at the California State University chancellor's office, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, in Long Beach, Calif.AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
The CSU has committed to increase the amount of financial aid it disperses by approximately one-third of the new tuition revenue — per its FAQ, it anticipates an additional $47 million in Cal Grants in 2024-25.
Andrade-Dominguez said she’s been working with the Sacramento State president’s office to send out an educational campaign about how the increases will impact students.
She added that she plans to work with the financial aid and Crisis Assistance & Resource Education Support offices on campus to figure out how to get information to students ahead of the coming school year, when the first tuition increase will be effective.
ASI will also have three student forums this semester where students can talk directly to campus leadership.
“At these forums, students [can] raise concerns about the tuition increase, and what they need and how the university should be of support,” she said.
While the tuition increases could help the state university system close its budget deficit, the increases could further impact enrollment, which had been declining even before the pandemic started in 2020.
“I am concerned about the demographic, population statistics and the student enrollment conditions that we already have,” faculty trustee Darlene Yee-Melichar said during the meeting Wednesday. “We’re having fewer students graduate from high school, going to community colleges and going to a four-year college, so I’m not quite sure what this tuition proposal will do to them.”
Since Yee-Melichar isn’t part of the Committee on Finance, she was unable to cast a vote for or against the proposal.
More systemwide shake-ups could be happening.
Just as faculty were there to support students, students were there to support faculty. The California Faculty Association could strike if its contract negotiations with the CSU system remain at an impasse — which they reached in late August. The union is asking for a 12% salary bump, for the CSU to raise the base salary for faculty and increase parental leave, among other proposals.
“It's about having access and sustainability, to be able to do what we need to do — we are not asking for anything that is out of scope,” Berta-Ávila, the Sacramento State professor and faculty union leader, said. “We're asking for things that are already happening nationally, and even internationally. And for students, they're asking, and we're asking with them, [for] a chance to be able to have a college education. That is not outrageous.”
The first tuition increase takes effect in the 2024-25 academic year and CSU trustees must vote again on any future increases after the 2028-29 academic year.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the vote tally. It has been corrected.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect comments from Sacramento State’s ASI president.
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