Strike vote, fee hikes raise student anxieties
Daily Breeze 3/7/07
Even so, UC students could be expected to pay fees of an additional 7 percent this fall, with Cal State students paying 10 percent more under the governor's January budget plan.
On top of that, students may soon have to bear the brunt of a faculty strike at CSU campuses. Instructors at Cal State Dominguez Hills this week began voting on whether to authorize a strike that could begin in early April. Instructors have been at odds with the CSU administration for nearly two years over pay raises.
A rolling strike by CSU faculty could interrupt instruction with two-day walkouts at individual campuses on different days.
On the issue of rising student fees, there is at least some hope on the horizon, with the state Legislative Analyst's Office perhaps able to inject some reason into the debate. The analyst has called for fee increases, yet substantially lower than what the governor proposed.
Since the mid-1990s, students have been asked to pay an ever-increasing share of their education, which has placed a strain on the finances of students and their families. It has left students juggling school, work and an increasing load of debt.
The nonpartisan legislative analyst chastised the governor for not only expensive, but seemingly arbitrary increases, and said the rise in fees at both institutions should be about 2.4 percent this fall.
"The governor provides no rationale for the proposed fee levels," the legislative analyst wrote. "The UC and CSU fee increases are tied to neither an inflationary index nor a specified share of cost."
If the Legislature were to go with the governor's estimated 4 percent rise in education costs, then it should stick to that figure, and raise fees by no more than 4 percent, the analyst said.
That would be a fairer solution.
California needs to sort out the issues of stagnant instructor pay and escalating student fees. When the state keeps upping the ante for students with no attempt to correlate fee hikes with true education costs, it's unfair. And it simply does not compute.