Friday, September 11, 2009

Rising Higher Than Inflation

So sayeth the major Sacramento newspaper:

UC officials on Thursday released a plan that calls for a 15 percent increase in basic student fees starting in the winter 2010 term, followed by another 15 percent hike next fall.

If approved, in-state undergraduate fees would rise by 32 percent to $10,302.

Graduate student fees also would rise under the proposal.

6 comments:

maxutils said...

At some point, we are going to need to decide if we want to have state supported higher education . . .because the fee increases in the last twenty years are ridiculous.

It used to be that it required hard work to get in to a UC, but once there it was a great value -- and California's citizens got well educated workers out of the deal.

Now, affirmative action has widened the net, and costs are rising. Students are taking longer to graduate, and UCs are admitting students incapable of meeting high school standards. At this point, I would argue that we shouldn't bother, and abandon the pretext of funding a public university -- because, if we're teaching them high school English and algebra, it's not a university, and if we keep raising tuition, it's not public.

Darren said...

Excellent points.

Scott McCall said...

wow, that's 1K less than what I pay per semester here at the university of arizona, and i pay out of state.

i'd hate to see what out of state tuition costs are

Ellen K said...

(You knew this was coming....) Fees are the insidious part of the college bill. Colleges will publicly pat themselves on the back for low state tuition, never revealing the real impact of the total fee package until the student is enrolling for classes. And many of those fees go to serve special programs, events and facilities that the average student never uses. And yes, I mean athletic facilities that are reserved for the quasi-professional athletes that use up their eligibility showing off to the major leagues on the backs of students who have to pay the full price of attending college. This needs to change. We can't afford it, academically, financially or socially.

Steve USMA '85 said...

Here is an example of Ellen K's point. My three kids are all in the University of Maryland system schools. The bill for one of them reads as follows for the current Fall semester:

Tuition: $3,242
Athletic Fee: $384
Transportation Fee: $176
Auxiliary Facilities Fee: $236
University Commons Fee: $262
Materials Fee: $50
Technology Fee: $97
Student Activity Fee: $39

That's $1,244 in fees. That is an additional 38.4% above the tuition costs.

Yahoo! Maryland only charges $6,484 in tuition a year.

Ummm...but Mr. Steve, if you want your kid to go to our school, the actual bill is almost $9,000. Nothing like the old bait & switch.

I won't go into housing & food at this point other than to say it basically doubles the cost.

Anonymous said...

What irked me about Davis (before I withdrew, I'm now going to community college)is that there were so many things in the university that my money was supporting that I wouldn't use. Even the food was nicer than it had to be! It's like they force us to have luxury when we just want to learn.