By Amy Frye
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]
A major perk most students don’t even know exists is
slowly fading away as California’s tuition-free higher
education policy for its residents has become, in practice, a thing
of the past.
The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, approved
by the University of California board of Regents and State Board of
Education, included two major features: one was that student fees
should support expenses that were not the direct cost of
instruction, and the second was the state would cover the cost of
instruction.
Budget shortfalls in the early 1990s prompted the UC to change
its policy as it was forced to increase student fees to cover part
of the operating budget ““ which includes instructional
costs.
In 1999 the UC Office of the President released a list of
amendments to the original master plan, and stated
“reaffirmation of California’s long-time commitment to
the principle of tuition-free education to residents of the
state” as one of its goals.
The goal has yet to be met.
A new master plan for education was released in August and
advocates the adoption of a student fee policy aimed at stabilizing
fees “such that they increase in a moderate and predictable
fashion.”
Specifically the plan aims to see “a shift from no or low
fees to affordable fees,” according to UCOP.
What appears to be tuition payed by students is lumped under
educational fees on the registrar’s listing of student
fees.
In fact many students believe that they do pay tuition, and use
this word interchangeably with student fees.
“I don’t know if our professors’ salaries come
straight out of our tuition,” said Erika Rivera, a fifth-year
political science and international development studies
student.
According to the UCLA Office of Academic Planning and Budget,
educational fees help fund financial aid and other academic and
non-academic programs that are determined by UCOP.
These programs include paying for instructional equipment,
faculty salaries, operation and maintenance of property, admissions
and registration.
Most of the fees listed are for services students receive at
UCLA, such as access to the Wooden Center or the assurance that
Ackerman and Kerckhoff will withstand earthquakes after their
renovation. However the majority of student fees, $2,716 of the
total $4,224.77 paid by undergraduate residents at UCLA, actually
go to educational fees.
Rivera would like to see her fees go toward more outreach
programs and “anything where you are going to schools and
getting students more excited about college, and obviously to the
upkeep of the campus.”
Pam Kotchavong, a UCLA alumna, would have liked to see her fees
go toward “better technological innovations for
students.”
Educational fees were introduced in 1970, and in 1994, when the
bad economy caused drastic state budget cuts, they were used to
cover instructional costs, said UC press aide Hanan Eisenman.
Where the state once covered tuition, a gap remains that
universities are forced to fill. The solution is to use student
fees that formerly funded services to cover instructional
costs.
The original master plan made a clear distinction between
instructional costs and non-instructional costs. The former was to
be funded by the state and fees were to cover non-instructional
costs.
Michael Ricketts, a consultant for the legislative committee to
develop a master plan, said the new version still tries to make
this distinction but recognizes the need to look at fee structure
and assure the access to and quality of education.
This line between fees and tuition was blurred in order to
“preserve the high quality of education,” Eisenman
said.
Ricketts said it is not worth it to make a distinction between
student fees and tuition because the current student fees
don’t even cover all of the non-instructional costs, and that
the students have always paid a small part of the cost of
education.
Kotchavong doesn’t mind seeing her fees go toward
instructional costs anyway.
“A lot of the staffers are underpaid … and they are an
integral part of the university,” she said.