Tuition freeze coming?

Mike Menninger
The Daily Aztec
Feb 8, 2008

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling for major tuition hikes to help ease California's fiscal crisis, but students in both the University of California and the California State University systems aren't going to let that happen without a fight.

Students and Families for Tuition Relief Now is organizing an initiative to freeze tuition within the UCs and the CSUs for five years. Students in bright yellow T-Shirts are petitioning for signatures to get the proposed College Affordability Act of 2008 on the November ballot at 30 campuses across California, including San Diego State.

"This really started up over the summer," said Ami Patel, a spokesperson for Tuition Relief Now, which is headquartered near UC Berkeley. "With a 96 percent tuition increase at the UCs over the past five years, college is becoming more unaffordable. This (effort) will put it in the students' hands so they can reach out (to the voters)."

According to a survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, 84 percent of those polled said college affordability is a problem. Tuition at both UC and CSU has nearly doubled over the past six years and is likely to increase again this year.

The act also calls for a 1 percent surcharge on personal incomes of more than $1 million. Sixty percent of that new revenue would go to both systems and benefit undergraduate education.

On Jan. 10, Schwarzenegger proposed a $312.9 million cut to the CSU budget that was approved by the CSU Board of Trustees for the 2008/2009 fiscal year.

"That's just the way the system is set up," said Claudia Keith, a spokesperson for CSU. "Though it unfortunately means less students get in and less classes are offered, we need to find ways to keep the system running."

Volunteers for Tuition Relief Now need to collect 434,000 valid signatures to get the proposed law on the ballot in November.