As regents of the University of California and trustees of the California State University system get set to impose heavy and dramatic new fee increases on hundreds of thousands of students, they would be well-advised to look back 10 years.

Back then, the annual budget tussles between Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and a Legislature dominated by Democrats almost always ended with some kind of tuition increase required as part of their eventual agreement. But at a severe cost.

For when state budgets are balanced on the backs of college students, higher education becomes remote and unattainable for many. There is often a political price to pay for this.

In 1993, when times were tough as the state emerged from a major recession, one student organization estimated that for every 1 percent fees were increased, at least 1,000 students would be forced to forget about college. CSU officials never disputed that figure and it probably is still quite valid.

Now there’s a new and more severe budget crunch, with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis up against a Democratic legislative majority that doesn’t want to cut programs for the poor or the environment and a Republican minority which must be appeased, but is extremely reluctant to raise taxes. University fees, however, seem to be another matter. Once again, therefore, the state budget will apparently be balanced at least partly on the backs of college students.

The figure most commonly tossed about by the UC Board of Regents and the CSU Board of Trustees is 25 percent. That would be on top of the 10 percent increase they began charging students last fall. UC has already imposed fee increases for its summer session. Both boards will make decisions either this month or next about the coming school year, so the new fees can be collected when students register in September — even if the rest of the state budget should still remain in limbo at that time.

Altogether, this means in-state tuition at the University of California will likely rise about $795, while Cal State fees go up $396. That would set overall tuition for UC at $5,082 per year; $1,968 for Cal State.

These are high figures for colleges whose stated purpose is to make higher education available to every qualified Californian.

But both systems maintain the higher fees are needed because of budget cuts they know are coming. The higher tuition will eventually affect plenty of folks who are not students. Employers will have fewer qualified nurses, engineers and librarians to choose from. Schools will have a smaller pool of qualified new teachers. And on and on for virtually every occupation. Inevitably, this will lead to importing more and more highly skilled and educated workers from other states or countries. Which, in turn, translates into more unemployment in California.

All this has a few officials feeling sympathy for students. Some CSU trustees spent much of the past month searching for waste in their system in an effort to reduce the fee increases. And Davis’ proposed May budget revision at least alleviated fears that fee increases could go higher than 25 percent.

Those are steps in the right direction. But most university regents and trustees nevertheless treat the increases as a mere nuisance, no big deal. They sometimes seem not to understand that these increases, together with hikes in what community colleges charge per unit of study, will surely knock thousands of young Californians out of academics, just like they did 10 years ago, changing lives for the worse for generations to come.

That’s why the universities must look everywhere else, including the expense accounts of top administrators, before raising tuition 1 percent, let alone 25 percent. Davis, also, ought to think hard about this. How can he hope to be remembered as an “education governor” when he’s allowing a financial crisis to deprive thousands of able students of the higher education their state has always promised?