Updated at 5:52 p.m. Nov. 18, 2014
UC San Diego students staged a sit-in Tuesday to protest a tuition hike proposal — an action mirrored at other University of California campuses.
The local so-called “Day of Action Against the UC Tuition Plan” took place late Tuesday morning in front of UCSD’s Geisel Library. Students were protesting ahead of a UC Board of Regents vote on a proposal to raise annual tuition 5 percent in each the next five years.
The 26-member board will convene Wednesday at UC San Francisco to begin debating whether to enact the cumulative 25 percent increase, which would push the current $11,220 base tuition to more than $15,000 by 2019.
In-state students would pay $612 more for the 2015-16 school year. Out- of-state students would pay the same increased rate, plus a non-resident fee of $22,878, which would also increase by the same percentage, according to UC.
A formal vote is expected Thursday.
UCSD student Anali Valdez said that if the increase is approved, it would mean a 287 percent tuition increase between 2002 and 2020.
“That’s insane,” she told Fox 5.
Gov. Jerry Brown opposes the proposed hike, as does Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, an ex-officio regent, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, a former member of the UC Board of Regents and California State University trustee.
Garamendi said the current proposal, combined with other recent draconian tuition increases, would “take us backwards.”
“When we price students out of an education, we rob them of an opportunity to reach their full potential,” Garamendi said.
“I’ve met families who scrapped everything they could afford to send their first child to college, only to see the siblings denied their chance at their American dream,” he said. “There is no greater cure to poverty than a good education. There’s no easier way to tank an economy than to make a great state’s universities inaccessible.”
UC officials maintain the hike is necessary to help recruit more in- state students, offset salaries, which are on average $116,000 for faculty, and higher pension costs.
Opponents of the plan contend the UC system dug itself into a hole by suspending member contributions into its pension fund and failing to enact reforms to the system’s defined-benefit plans until unfunded liabilities had swelled — now totaling $7.2 billion.
This year, the UC system will pay an estimated $1.3 billion into the pension fund. UC Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom told one newspaper that if the state would cover a third of that, tuition hikes wouldn’t be on the table now.
UC President Janet Napolitano said tuition rates have been frozen for three years, and higher state funding could lessen the need for tuition increases.
“The investment per student by the state to the University of California is much lower than it has been in decades,” she said.
According to the California Department of Finance, the UC system’s general fund allocation was upped this year, and how to appropriate revenue is left to the board’s discretion.
— City News Service