Carrying signs with slogans such as "Don't Terminate My Future,'' and "Raise Taxes Not Fees,'' Boalt Hall School of Law students gathered yesterday in their verdant courtyard on the UC Berkeley campus to protest a $5, 000 fee increase Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to impose on them this fall -- on top of another $3,000 fee increase this year.

The fee increase will push the bill at Boalt this fall to $22,500 a year, not including room and board. Schwarzenegger's rationale for the exorbitant increase is that most law graduates will earn ''significantly higher income levels after graduation than other graduates.''

But conversations with students show that many were admitted to Boalt precisely because they don't want to go work for a private firm, but are committed to public-interest law which pays far less.

Many students are already carrying huge debts. First-year student Freeda Yllana, 24, had hoped to get a job dealing with domestic violence or environmental law when she graduates. She took out a $27,000 loan just to get this far, calculating she would end up with loans totaling just under $100,000 by the time she graduates. But now she thinks that the latest fee increases --sprung on students after they had already enrolled -- will make that an impossible goal. ''It's really unfair to put a $5,000 tax on me,'' she says.

What especially rankles many of the students is that none of the new fees will go to improve their education at Boalt, but instead will just disappear into the bottomless money pit in Sacramento.