SAN FRANCISCO -- Students will pay the highest fees in a decade to attend California's public universities this fall after higher education leaders Wednesday approved steep tuition increases and warned that more hikes could come.
Added to 10 percent fee increases adopted earlier this year, the hikes will push tuition bills for in-state undergraduate students at the University of California and California State University to roughly 40 percent more than last fall.

"It doesn't take a Ph.D. economist to know that a nearly 50 percent increase in a year is going to lead to (a) catastrophic dropout (rate) ... and chip away at efforts to diversify the student body," said Michael Hall, a CSU Northridge graduate student.

CSU trustees Wednesday adopted a 30 percent fee increase, while UC regents voted for a 25 percent increase with an option for an additional 5 percent.

That means a full-time CSU undergraduate will pay $2,046 in fees for the year, up from $1,572 or a $474 boost. For CSU graduate students, fees rise to $2,256 from $1,734.

At UC, undergraduates will pay $4,984 if the expected 30 percent increase is invoked. With mandatory campus fees, most students will pay closer to $5,300 a year. UC graduate students will pay 25 percent more -- up to $5,019 a year -- and pay roughly $6,346 with other campus fees.

The dramatic rise in cost for 600,000 college students at the two systems stems directly from California's $38.2 billion budget crisis -- a shortfall that is sapping public spending at all levels of state government.

A state budget for 2003-2004 is more than two weeks overdue, but lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis remain deadlocked over a solution to the record deficit. College officials fear that a budget deal will ultimately bring cuts that go far deeper than what they have braced for. UC and CSU officials say they must consider limiting enrollment for next year -- a highly controversial issue.

UC regents met in San Francisco, where the nine-member Finance Committee voted 5-4 to raise fees by 25 percent and gave UC President Richard Atkinson authority to boost them another 5 percent in the coming weeks. Most regents expressed reluctant support for higher fees, and the full board is expected to ratify them today.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a nonvoting member of the board, condemned the increases, saying, "In tough times, college should be more affordable, not less. This increase lacks vision. It's not fair."

CSU trustees gathered in Long Beach on Wednesday and voted 11-2 to enact 30 percent fee increases. CSU and UC raised fees about 10 percent for the spring 2003 semester. Like the UC regents, CSU trustees also expressed regret over the rising costs for students, but said budget cuts expected to total at least $330 million left them with no other choice.

"We don't really have an alternative at this point," said Alexander Gonzalez, the new president at CSU Sacramento, who backed the trustees' decision.

M. Alex Lopez, the student representative on the CSU board, cast one of the dissenting votes.

"Every student wants a piece of the American dream," Lopez said. "Raising fees and decreasing access (to higher education) are obstacles to that American dream."

Both systems will dedicate a third of the revenue from higher fees to financial aid, which officials promised would be enough to cover the increases for the neediest students. UC also adopted a new financial aid policy to cover part of the higher fees for middle-income students who qualify -- a move intended to address concerns that middle-class families will bear the brunt of steeper tuition costs.

UC Davis sophomore Carolyn David said she falls into the middle-class category, but is doubtful she would qualify for any aid. She expects that she'll have to give up some of her volunteer work in order to work more hours at her paying job at the campus gym.

"I still have a lot of years to go to the UC," David said. "These increases today probably won't be the last, and soon my parents will be paying both for me and my brother to go to college. I'm not sure how we will do it."

Officials in both systems called for reform that would allow fees to rise steadily year-to-year in a way that would protect students and universities from the political whims of Sacramento and the boom and bust of state budgets. Neither UC nor CSU had raised fees for the last seven years when the state treasury was brimming with surpluses and politicians favored heavy state subsidies for college costs.

UC trustees set up a committee to propose a new fee policy, while regents discussed more radical options such as a multitiered fee system in which affluent students would pay more than middle and lower-income students. Regent Tom Sayles is pushing such a system, and if it is adopted, UC would be the only institution to charge different fees based on income.

Gov. Davis was the first to call for fee increases of 25 percent when he rolled out his 2003-2004 budget proposal in January. The Democrat also asked lawmakers to carve nearly $700 million from the budgets of the two university systems.

Lawmakers may go even further than the governor. As they haggle over closing the budget shortfall, legislators have floated a handful of budget amendments that would squeeze closer to $1 billion from both systems.

Of grave concern to UC officials is a proposal by Senate Democrats that would cut $38 million from outreach efforts -- roughly half the budget for programs such as preparing high school students for UC and recruiting underrepresented minority students. They also expressed concern over another Senate proposal to delay the opening of a 10th UC campus in Merced to fall 2005.

Though students, faculty and some regents argued that the fee increases burden students with solving an unfair share of UC's and CSU's budget woes, administration officials said higher fees account for only about 20 percent of the fix. Noninstructional programs are taking the biggest hits, they say, with reductions to administrative, library, research and outreach services. And financial relief from federal and private sources isn't likely to materialize.