The UC Board of Regents has approved a fee increase for undergraduate and graduate students every year since 2002.
Last year, students avoided a fee increase when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bought out the planned student fees.
But no reprieve is likely to come from the governor’s office as a fee increase for the 2007-2008 academic year is included in the proposed state budget, and that part of the UC’s budget accounts for millions of dollars.
The decision to raise fees is a non-issue. Distasteful though it may be, it simply has to happen. Yet the regents still have not declared a fee increase, and as a result, many students and parents will have to wait even longer before they know how much they will owe for school next year.
The regents typically vote on fee increases at their November meeting, but this year the vote has been postponed two months so far with no conclusion likely until March.
The regents must see that students and families need to know how much they will be paying in order to plan ahead.
For students who recognize this as the charade it is and understand that the regents have no way around raising fees, this should not be a problem.
But for those who are strung along by the regents’ indecisiveness, the regents’ further stalling will only make the increases more difficult when they do come.