PITTSBURG - With the stroke of a pen in Sacramento this week, tuition at Los Medanos College went up again.

Students on the Pittsburg campus saw fees jump immediately from $11 per unit to $18 -- a 63 percent increase -- when Gov. Gray Davis signed a trailer bill Tuesday.

Even students who registered before the new fee took effect will have to pay more. The college district is preparing to mail bills for the $7-per-unit difference.

All cosmetology student Tanya Clark knows is that the new fees will force her to put some bills on the back burner this month.

"It's quite high," she said while waiting in line Wednesday morning to sign up for classes at LMC.

The 32-year-old Bay Point mother of three had earmarked $121 of her paycheck for the 11 units she typically takes.

By the time Clark learned that fees were likely to go up, it was too late to spring for the additional $77 without taking it from money she needed for other payments.

"After (being used to) paying $11, jumping to $18 -- it's kind of a big increase," Clark said.

But there are plenty of students worse off because they don't have a job yet and don't qualify for a fee waiver, added Clark, who works full-time as a parking control officer in San Francisco.

The state's 108 community colleges never charged a fee until fall 1984, when students began paying $5 per unit.

Since then, the biggest single increase has been a nearly 67 percent hike between fall 1991 and spring 1993.

This latest mark-up is the second largest.

Unlike the money that California State University and University of California generate with a fee hike, very little of the estimated $90 million in additional funds this increase is expected to produce actually will benefit community colleges, said Contra Costa Community College District spokesman George Medovoy.

Rather, 98 percent of that money will be folded into the state's general fund, he said.

That means that colleges won't be able to restore the class sections and services that budget shortfalls have forced them to eliminate or reduce, said Kirsten Macintyre, spokeswoman for California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office in Sacramento.

Meanwhile, employees of the Contra Costa Community College District have started preparing two mass mailings.

The estimated 23,000 students who registered before the $18 fee took effect aren't off the hook.

All of them will get a reminder that the new fee also applies to them and that financial aid is available to those who qualify, Medovoy said.

It's an expensive reminder at that: He noted that the district will spend $3,700 to print and stamp the oversize postcards.

During the first week of September these early birds also will receive a bill for the $7 difference.

As of Tuesday, this group included 5,157 LMC students.

Registrants should be prepared to send the money as soon as the invoice arrives; those who are delinquent will not be able to order copies of their transcript or enroll in any courses, Medovoy said.

Lawmakers have tried to ensure that the fee hike will not derail the plans of truly needy students by allocating an additional $167 million to the Board of Governors Fee Waiver Program.

This source of financial aid covers the entire $18-per-unit fee.

In 2001-02, the most recent year for which information is available, the state helped approximately 535,000 community college students by forgiving about $95 million in fees, said Mary Gill, vice chancellor of governmental relations for the California Community Colleges chancellor's office.