Tuition jumps evident as state raises fees

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on Dec. 7, 2011. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

For decades, higher education in California was seen as a right to its residents.

Students graduated from high school, which they went to for free, and went on to one of the two four-year university systems in the state paying low tuition fees, or they could go to a two-year college before transferring, cost free.

But those days are long gone as the cost of attending college continues to climb year-to-year.

Community college fees are presently at $36 a unit and will likely be raised to $46 by summer 2012, and this year, for the first time, California State Universities received more funding from student tuition than state allocations.

This trend began during a dip in the state economy in 1983, five years after California's tax revolution and the passing of Proposition 13 in 1978, when the state Community College Board of Governors started exploring ways to fill the revenue gap.

The quick solution was to charge all the students coming to the classroom an emergency fee until a turnaround in the economy.

Art department Chairperson John Diestler, who has been in the California community college system as a student and professor since before the fee implementation, said everyone looked at California and wanted its system in their states.

"We were the envy of the country, but it wasn't sustainable," he said. "It was a nice plan, but we couldn't hold to it. This is what we have now."

Nearly 30 years later, the state, its system and students are in a similar situation: Jerry Brown is the governor of California, again, trying to expand a receding economy, again, and lawmakers are closing a monetary gap by digging into the pockets of students, again.

"California has always been considered the land flowing with milk and honey. California was the place to go to dream big," Contra Costa College Interim Dean of Students Vicki Ferguson said. "Now California is having to live within its means."

Dec. 10, 1982

As part of the state's Master Plan for Higher Education signed into law by Gov. Edmund Brown, Jerry's father, in April 1960, student tuition was banned, allowing all Californians to attend its community colleges free of charge.

But in 1978, voter-approved Proposition 13 was enacted, capping property taxes at one percent, which over the next five years turned a $3 billion budget surplus into a $3 billion deficit by 1983.

As Gov. Jerry Brown was preparing to leave the Capitol in 1982, community college programs were cut trying to fill the fiscal vacuum left by Proposition 13.

The Board of Governors, at a meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 10, 1982, voted 14-1 to, for the first time in the state, make students pay for courses at two-year colleges.

According to the Board of Governors policy recommendation, a flat $5 fee was to be imposed and "limited to (the) 1983-84 (academic year) on an emergency basis" to make up for the state's $1.5 billion deficit that was predicted to double by the end of that fiscal year.

The decision drew hundreds of protesters and the meeting in San Francisco had to be shut down because of the overflow crowd.

Then-Contra Costa Community College District Chancellor Harry Buttimer told The Advocate after the 1982 announcement, "I think it would be unlikely that the tuition-free system would return. Once fees are in, I think the best we can hope for is that they won't go up."

He was half right.

He was correct to be skeptical of the board's one-year recommendation for fees and expectations of a rebounding economy.

Twenty-eight years after the implementation of an "emergency fee," costs continue to climb.

Current Chancellor Helen Benjamin said California residents expected higher education, at least at the two-year level, to be free.

"People in state see it as a broken promise," Dr. Benjamin said. "It's a promise the state has not been able to keep."

By the numbers

There have been 11 fee changes since the implementation of the $5 fee in 1983-84, and they are now up to $36 per unit.

State Vice Chancellor for Communications Paul Feist said legislators and Gov. Brown decided before this year's budget passed that if a certain revenue level was not met by Dec. 15, the Department of Finance could impose a $10 increase to community college fees as well as make a $102 million "trigger" cut, having a mid-year impact on the spring budget.

"The probability is high we don't have the revenue to avoid triggers," he said.

The $10 increase would be the ninth fee increase in 12 changes that appear to come sporadically.

"It creates an uncertainty about your future, which creates additional amounts of stress on students," CCC ASU President Rodney Wilson said. "If our Legislature would make the certain decisions — they may not be the best political decisions — but if they make these decisions, it would (create) certainty in our future."

The flat $5 rate increased to $6 per unit in 1991 and it has increased more often than not ever since.

The only three decreases in fees were in 1998-99, 1999-2000 and in spring 2007. Fees dropped one dollar in each of the '98 and '99 school years from $13 per unit to $12 and again to $11 before the new millennium.

The $11 per unit fee stayed for four years until it jumped in 2003-04 to $18.

Fees have doubled since then, despite a reduction in 2007.

In 2004-05, a year after they increased nearly 64 percent. Fees jumped up again to $26 per unit before dipping to $20 in 2007.

Since that last bottoming out, there have been increases of $6 and $10 per unit, respectively, in fall 2009 and 2011.

The increases from $11 to $18 and again to $26 per unit in 2003-04 and 2004-05 were the largest increases from year-to-year.

"When fees doubled, almost doubled, it seemed to be without rhyme or reason," CCC President McKinley Williams said. "(Access to) education is being nickel and dimed (away). I think there is something really wrong about that."

Bargain price

Although California's fees continue to rise, they are still the lowest in the country and well below the national average.

According to the College Board, public two-year colleges charge, on average, $2,963 per year in tuition and fees.

The state allocates between $4,000 and $4,500 per Full-Time Equivalent Student to colleges from its general fund each year. One FTES equals one student taking 12 units.

Ferguson said when she moved to California in spring 2003, when fees were $11 per unit and ready to jump to $18 in the fall, students were getting ready for a march on Sacramento to protest the fee hike.

As a newly hired adjunct counseling professor, she said people from around campus would ask her about the situation in Alabama, her home state.

"It was cheaper to live in Alabama, but college was $70 to $80 a unit," she said.

Diestler said even as fees creep toward $50 per unit, even if it doubled to $72 per unit, California would still be the cheapest deal in the country and still would not significantly contribute to bringing the state back into the black.

"It's a drop in the bucket," he said. "They'll (students) never pay for what they get until it's in the thousand dollar (per unit) amount."