10:31 PM: A group of students and activists has taken over Wheeler Hall at the University of California at Berkeley this evening following a vote by a University of California Board of Regent committee earlier today supporting a tuition increase.
The group of at least 100 students plans to stay in the campus building until the regents agree to drop the tuition increase plan, according to Ronald Cruz, an attorney for the activist group By Any Means Necessary.
The committee voted 7-2 today in favor of a tuition hike of as much as 5 percent annually for the next five years today despite opposition from figures including Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Students also protested at the meeting at the University of California at San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus today, linking arms and attempting to block UC regents from entering the meeting.
University police arrested one protester who allegedly broke a glass door to the building. The protester’s name was not immediately being released.
The full board is scheduled to vote on the tuition hike proposal bundled inside the complete UC budget on Thursday.
Newsom and UC student regent Sadia Saifuddin cast the two dissenting votes this afternoon.
Following the vote, Saifuddin said students are feeling that the priorities of the state are not representing their interests or that of Californians.
She said she wants to see the state have incremental increases in its funding higher education.
Saifuddin said a new statewide proposition might be needed to raise funding for higher education. She suggested an oil severance tax, but said she was open to discussing other possible funding sources.
Following today’s vote, Newsom said he believes the university’s costs need to be reduced.
Newsom said he supports Brown’s proposal that the governor shared with the UC regents and the public today, which would create a new subcommittee to develop proposals to reduce the university’s costs while increasing quality and access.
Brown suggested that the new subcommittee consider five major initiatives, including identification of pathways for undergraduate students to complete their degrees in under three years, instead of four.
Brown’s other initiatives include implementation of more consistent requirements for undergraduate majors, offering a wide range of online courses, giving credits through non-classroom activities such as work experience and delineating campus-specific specialization, as well as cross-campus collaborations.
“The Governor is not calling for the University of Phoenix,” Newsom said, explaining that Brown doesn’t want to turn the university into an online school, but is instead advocating for the UC system to look for new ways to reach students on a larger scale, as demand for entrance to the UC system increases.
UC president Janet Napolitano proposed the tuition increase earlier this month.
Napolitano said the university’s revenue issue was a result of public disinvestments, not university budget allocations. She said unless the state increased its funding for the universities, a tuition hike was the only foreseeable option.
Under the tuition increase, a 5 percent hike would raise tuition for in-state students by $612 to $12,804 in the 2015-16 school year, according to Napolitano’s office. Tuition for out-of-state students would increase by more than $1,700 to about $36,820.
Following Napolitano’s comments, the crowd chanted, “Hey ho, Napolitano has got to go.”
During a public comment session, students and members of the public urged the regents not to pass the financial burden onto students and their families.
Instead, many UC staffers and students suggested cutting the salaries of top executives and to stop relying on temporary and contracted workers, which they said cost the university millions of dollars each year.
UC executive vice president Nathan Brostrom said that the 30 percent of UC students who will be impacted by the tuition increase can afford it since they come from families with incomes above $75,000 per year.
He said low- and middle-income families would get additional support under the new plan and that more than half of students would continue to pay no tuition at all.
Proponents of the long-term stability plan, which include the tuition hike, said it is integral to the stability and vitality of the UC system.
Other proponents of the plan argued that regents have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure the strength of the university and that without further investment from the state, this was their only choice.
Hannah Albarazi, Bay City News
9:10 PM: A University of California Board of Regents committee approved a plan at its meeting in San Francisco today to raise tuition by as much as 5 percent annually for the next five years despite calls by Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom to further explore ways to reduce the university’s costs.
The 7-2 vote in favor of the tuition hike by the regents’ committee on long range planning this afternoon came following protests by students who came from many of the UC campuses to today’s meeting at the UCSF Mission Bay campus.
Students linked arms and carried signs rejecting the proposed tuition hike. They attempted to block UC regents who they felt would vote in favor of the plan from entering the meeting.
University police arrested one protester who allegedly broke a glass door to the building. The protester’s name was not immediately being released.
The full board is scheduled to vote on the tuition hike proposal bundled inside the complete UC budget on Thursday.
Newsom, along with UC student regent Sadia Saifuddin, cast the two dissenting votes this afternoon.
Following the vote, Saifuddin said students are feeling that the priorities of the state are not representing their interests or that of Californians.
She said she wants to see the state have incremental increases in its funding higher education.
Saifuddin said a new statewide proposition might be needed to raise funding for higher education. She suggested an oil severance tax, but said she was open to discussing other possible funding sources.
Following today’s vote, Newsom said he believes the university’s costs need to be reduced.
Newsom said he supports Brown’s proposal that the governor shared with the UC regents and the public today, which would create a new subcommittee to develop proposals to reduce the university’s costs while increasing quality and access.
Brown suggested that the new subcommittee consider five major initiatives, including identification of pathways for undergraduate students to complete their degrees in under three years, instead of four.
Brown’s other initiatives include implementation of more consistent requirements for undergraduate majors, offering a wide range of online courses, giving credits through non-classroom activities such as work experience and delineating campus-specific specialization, as well as cross-campus collaborations.
“The Governor is not calling for the University of Phoenix,” Newsom said, explaining that Brown doesn’t want to turn the university into an online school, but is instead advocating for the UC system to look for new ways to reach students on a larger scale, as demand for entrance to the UC system increases.
Newsom said that an oil severance tax would be valuable, but said the last time an oil severance tax was proposed, it lost due to “a huge amount of money invested by the oil companies.”
Prior to the vote, the regents discussed the proposed tuition increases and how it might impact students and their families.
UC president Janet Napolitano proposed the tuition increase earlier this month.
Napolitano disagreed with the governor, saying the university’s revenue issue was a result of public disinvestments, not university budget allocations. She said unless the state increased its funding for the universities, a tuition hike was the only foreseeable option.
Under the tuition increase, a 5 percent hike would raise tuition for in-state students by $612 to $12,804 in the 2015-16 school year, according to Napolitano’s office. Tuition for out-of-state students would increase by more than $1,700 to about $36,820.
Following Napolitano’s comments, the crowd chanted, “Hey ho, Napolitano has got to go.”
During a public comment session, students and members of the public urged the regents not to pass the financial burden onto students and their families.
Instead, many UC staffers and students suggested cutting the salaries of top executives and to stop relying on temporary and contracted workers, which they said cost the university millions of dollars each year.
According to UC executive vice president Nathan Brostrom, funding that should have gone to California’s investment in higher education has instead gone to the state’s correctional system.
Brostrom said that the 30 percent of UC students who will be impacted by the tuition increase can afford it since they come from families with incomes above $75,000 per year.
He said low- and middle-income families would get additional support under the new plan and that more than half of students would continue to pay no tuition at all.
Proponents of the long-term stability plan, which include the tuition hike, said it is integral to the stability and vitality of the UC system. Other proponents of the plan argued that regents have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure the strength of the university and that without further investment from the state, this was their only choice.
Tiffany Dena Loftin, a 2011 graduate of UC Santa Cruz, flew in from Washington D.C., where she lives and works, to speak at the meeting.
Following the vote, Loftin said she was angry.
She called for more transparency in the UC budget, saying that it is “not OK to raise tuition and not tell students where the money is going.”
Loftin said that she personally has almost $30,000 in student debt and has had to default on her student loans. She said other students shouldn’t have to go into debt to attend a public university.
Bob Samuels, a UCLA lecturer and president of the University Council of the California Federation of Teachers, agreed with Loftin, saying in a statement released today that the UC regents need to be more transparent in their budget.
Samuels said, “The public has to know that funding is being sent to the classroom, not to padding upper administrative salaries.”
He said he also agreed with the regents who say the UC system needs to return to adequate levels of state funding.
As the committee on long range planning was set to vote, one protester stood up, speaking over the regents as they voted, saying she felt the election was “illegitimate” and urging the board to have more student views represented.
Mohsin Marza, a student of sociology and black studies at UC Santa Barbara, said every UC student was against the tuition hike and that the “UC regents have shown that they are not concerned with what students have to say.”
In a statement released by the UC employee union AFSCME 3299, union president Kathryn Lybarger agreed with Brown and Newsom. She further highlighted areas in which the UC system could cut costs.
Lybarger said UC could save about $80 million per year by capping executive pay at $500,000.
She said that UC could also save $37 million per year by limiting pension benefits for 8,851 UC employees in the senior management and management personnel groupings to the “very generous packages” that their peers at CSU and the California Community College system receive.
Lybarger also said outsourcing work to contractors, instead of hiring workers as UC employees, is costing a great deal of money systemwide.
Additionally, Lybarger said UC has lost millions of dollars as a result of government safety fines, court-ordered settlements and workplace injuries as a result of refusing to properly staff its medical centers and campuses.
Hannah Albarazi, Bay City News
