Tuition at Sonoma State to rise 10%

Press-Democrat 3/15/07

By Bob Norberg

Tuition to attend Sonoma State University is going up 10 percent this fall, boosting the annual cost including campus fees to $3,900.

The increase in the base undergraduate fee for all 23 campuses of the state university system, which was approved Wednesday by trustees meeting in Long Beach, drew mixed reviews on the SSU campus.

Many students said they recognize the cost of a California college education is a bargain, but the increase will still hurt.

"I only work during the summer and my parents support my tuition but it will be a major blow for the finances," said Brandon Schuyler, a Rohnert Park senior.

The annual increase of $252 at SSU will take effect beginning with the fall semester.

The bill varies among the CSU campuses, which add hundreds of dollars in campus fees such as health and student government costs to the statewide base fee, which is currently $2,520. At SSU, those extra fees average about $1,100 year.

"If you look back East, we are still lower than everybody else," Santa Rosa senior Casey Cobb said. "You can't put a price on education; $300 doesn't seem like much. If it was $3,000, that would be different."

Tuition at the 10 UC campuses also is going up in the fall after the Board of Regents voted Wednesday to raise the base undergraduate fee by 7 percent to about $7,300 a year. Fees for UC graduate and professional schools also are increasing.

At CSU, the fee increase comes as the California Faculty Association is taking a strike authorization vote in a contract dispute that has been brewing for the past two years.

The association, representing 10,100 faculty members statewide including 530 at SSU, has been outspoken in its opposition to the fee increase.

"We know the students cannot consistently afford what has been a 90 percent increase over the last five years," said Andy Merrifield, an SSU political science professor who is president of the SSU faculty association chapter.

Merrifield said that there is no link between the student fee increase and the faculty contract demands.

"The students do not need to pay a fee increase for our salary demands to be met," Merrifield said.

Trustees had asked for enough state funding for the 2007-08 year to avoid a fee hike. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved their spending request but said the revenue should include a fee hike.

Some of the university spending is earmarked for increased salaries for faculty, staff and the CSU presidents, whose pay lags behind counterparts at comparable universities, said Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman in the chancellor's office.

The fee increase "is not linked to their demands, but it is linked to the CSU plan to close the salary lags for all employees," Potes-Fellow said.

The fee increase would raise $123 million statewide, bringing the revenue from student fees to $1.3 billion. Trustees earmarked a quarter of the increase, $38 million, for additional student aid.

"Nobody would want to raise fees if it wasn't necessary," said Susan Kashack, the associate vice president of communications at SSU, where student fees make up $26 million of its $95.9 million budget.

Half of the 8,000 students at SSU receive some form of aid or are in study-work programs.

"It's a problem for me," said junior Colin Timmons of Rohnert Park. "I pay my way and have to get loans. It is more money out of my pocket."

The faculty association, which has been in negotiations with CSU for two years, is taking a strike authorization vote at all 23 campuses. The results will be released next week, at about the same time a report is expected from a fact-finder.

The faculty is asking for a 25.25 percent increase over four years. CSU says it has made an offer 24 percent, but faculty representatives say the offer is deceptive and not as much as the system contends it is.