UC Regents consider 30 percent student fee hike to plug deficit

The University of California's Board of Regents met today in San Francisco to tackle a billion dollar budget deficit. One proposal to plug that hole is to hike student fees by 30 percent over the next couple of years. KPCC's Julie Small reports.

Julie Small: State budget cuts in the hundreds of millions of dollars this year helped blow a billion dollar hole in the UC system budget. Campuses have already scaled back staff, furloughed workers, cut pay, and postponed hires. UC President Mark Yudof said those actions already threatened to degrade the quality of education and that student fee hikes are the only choice.

Mark Yudof: I’m sorry. I regret it, but the state has stopped building freeways to higher education and it has started building toll roads.

Small: Under Yudof's proposal UC students would pay an extra $600 this academic year, and an extra $1,300 the next. The university would exempt students whose families earn less than $60,000. President Yudof said it was time for the regents to abandon hope that the state will reverse decades of decline in support for higher education.

Yudof:,/strong> That is what we've been doing for a decade, is faith based budgeting. That somehow if we wait the legislature will turn on the spigot. If we don't approve a 9 percent raise maybe they will do this, maybe they will do that.