Because of financial pressures, the University of California Board of Regents approved a plan Thursday to raise tuition by 32 percent over the next year, the most drastic response yet to the recession by a state university system.
According to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel, because California cut its funding to the system by over $800 million, the tuition hike comes as a necessary means to preserve education in the state.
""The state has not been able or willing to fund full enrollment,"" Montiel said. ""You have to increase revenue or else the quality is going to suffer.""
Montiel said although the entire country has been hurt by the recession, California is in particularly bad shape.
""There are very few degrees of freedom that the [California] Legislature has,"" UW-Madison public affairs and applied economics professor Andrew Reschovsky said. ""That is augmented by the fact that you need a two-thirds vote to approve any tax increase, meaning it's very difficult to solve fiscal problems.""
State universities across the country have seen a decrease in state funding, including UW-Madison. However, because Wisconsin's financial situation is not as severe as California's, the effects have not been as great.
""We have increased tuition by 5.5 percent for the last three years,"" UW System spokesperson David Giroux said. ""In this current downturn, we have been able to work with the state to avoid those kind of precipitous cuts and dramatic tuition increases.""
UW-Madison has also implemented the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates, which increases tuition over a four-year period for both in-state and out-of-state students. This increase is separate from the 5.5 percent across-the-board increase Giroux mentioned, which applies to all four-year UW System schools.
Before implementing major tuition increases, Montiel said UC tried to ease its financial problems by making across-the-board cuts to teaching assistants' and professors' salaries.
According to the UC Board of Regents report, the initiative will not apply to students whose family income is less than $70,000 per year. Thirty-three percent of the increased revenue will go toward financial aid, but the higher tuition still puts a UC education out of reach for many students.
UC-San Diego junior Jennifer Lien said many students will have to drop out because of the new costs. Sarah Breiner, a UC-Santa Cruz freshman, added that her ""roommate is not able to attend here next year because of the increase.""
According to Lien and Breiner, students across the UC system are in an uproar.
""It was pretty impressive to see students marching together and caring about their education, considering we [are] a pretty apathetic generation,"" Breiner said. ""It was very democratic the way people were addressing it.""
The reaction from students and professors in the UC system has drawn nationwide attention and increased concerns about whether something similar could happen at UW-Madison.
What many current UW-Madison students do not know is that, to some degree, it already has, though not during the current recession. Former UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, currently the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, said he recalls tuition being raised 16 percent in the 2003-'04 school year and again by 14.1 percent in 2004-'05.
However, Wiley said ""our Board of Regents is very student-oriented, very concerned about the levels of tuition we already have, and they are reluctant to raise the tuition any higher than is necessary.""
""Public school tuition used to be affordable for families in middle or lower income ranges, but they are being priced out,"" Wiley said. ""It would be one thing if financial aid or grants went up to keep pace with it, but that's not happening.""
