By Ashley A. Smith – EdSource
Improving California State University’s financial future will require a tuition increase for all students starting in fall 2024, a new report from the system’s fiscal advisers concludes.
The confluence of higher wage demands, delayed building repairs and growing expenses has put significant financial pressure on the nation’s largest public university system. Improving employee salaries could cost the system up to $1 billion. CSU already has a nearly $6 billion backlog in capital maintenance and renewal projects, which grows by $284 million annually, according to the report.
“CSU is under real financial stress with growing cost pressures that well exceed current revenues,” according to the report presented to trustees Wednesday. “The annual cost and revenue projections are daunting even without accounting for the huge backlog in capital renewal projects, the growing need to build and update facilities to stay abreast of the educational needs of students, and the full impact of unfunded mandates.”
The report suggested several different ways to increase tuition. For example, annual 3% increases in tuition for all students through 2030 would mean a freshman would see tuition increase to $5,914 in 2024, to $6,092 in 2025, and eventually reach $6,856 in 2030. A fourth-year student could see tuition in 2024 increase to $6,463.
Another suggestion would be to increase tuition by 5% for each freshman class, with no further increases until they graduate.
A third suggestion was to increase tuition by 5% each entering class, but then increase their tuition by 3% each year until they graduate.
Since 2011, tuition at CSU has only increased once, by 5% in 2017 to $5,742.
CSU trustee Julia Lopez, who supports the tuition increase and the report’s recommendations, which she helped write, said the majority of CSU students don’t pay the full cost of tuition because they use financial aid, including federal and state aid. And if the system were to follow the work group’s recommendations, then a financial aid work group would work to minimize any impact of tuition increases on students.
The report recommends a CSU board vote by September on a tuition policy that includes “gradual, moderate and predictable increases” for all students starting in fall 2024.
The report, for the first time, is giving CSU administrators a chance to see how much it would cost to operate the entire system, instead of just providing annual budget numbers.
The work group, which spent a year working on the report, recommended CSU adopt a multiyear approach to budgeting its operations and capital budgets. Other recommendations included refining policies on campus allocations, adopting predictable tuition policies and appointing a group to develop a comprehensive financial aid policy. The system mainly generates new revenue through state funding and tuition.
Krishan Malhotra, president, of the Cal State Student Association, told CSU trustees Wednesday that the students would be against any tuition hike.
The governor’s May revision budget maintains a promised a 5% base funding increase to CSU. However, to save money in other areas, Newsom proposed shifting some funding for several projects to CSU-issued bonds. The state would cover the debt payments for those bonds.
11 comments
‘High school graduates shun college for blue collar jobs: Enrollment declines to 62% as job growth at restaurants, theme parks and other hospitality sectors soars’
https://tinyurl.com/3r5v76yv
How about cutting administrators first. Didn’t employees just get a 33% raise? Nothing to see here.
Yeah the tuition is going up because they’re letting so many illegals go to school for free… Someone’s got to pay for the tuition so let’s raise the prices on the legal students going…
Wrong! I had friends who were illegals. They did get free education up until high school. When they entered college, they didn’t get any financial aids (cal grant, pell grant, ect…). In addition, they were paying the out of state tuition because they were undocumented; one of them told me that UCSD classified her as an international student.
Anyway, they didn’t take the education for granted; thus they are professionals (mostly doctors and lawyers) and US citizens.
Did you report them to ICE? If not, you betrayed your country.
How about reimbursing money to students who had to take classes (unbeknownst to students, in many cases) with professors who were found to have behaved inappropriately and the CSU system kept such behavior under wraps!? Those students were vulnerable to professors committing the same behavior and students’ safety seems to not have been a concern. Proper discipline should have resulted in firing, not relocating. Read the article linked: https://edsource.org/2022/new-batch-of-csu-records-show-professors-disciplined-for-sexual-harassment/676217
CSUs also don’t seem to allow for opposing views and many students just seem to go along with some of their teachings in order to not be harassed and to be able to graduate. Remember, not everyone can attend a preferred college/university due to factors that are beyond a student’s control.
Remember that CSUs didn’t give credit/refunds to students when the pandemic happened and everyone had to take online classes. In many cases, if not all, students were not informed that the online classes they needed to take (remember, online classes were the only choice) were going to be more expensive than in-person class. CSUs didn’t adjust their tuition fees to help students who had to pay more for online classes, and in many cases, if not all, they didn’t refund money to students who lived on-campus and had to leave, all due to the pandemic. I also don’t think there was any help available to oversee the proper relocation of international students who had nowhere to go. Low-income and minority students seem to not have been a priority nor there seem to have been any “allies” available to help them navigate
the CSU system during that time. It also seems that disabled students were left out in the dark.
We all know that no one could foresee that we all were going to have to shelter-in-place, but this was the time CSUs could have proven that they cared about student equity.
Seems that CSUs speak about helping others but they don’t lead by example. This “recommendation” for tuition increase is the latest example. We all know that at the end they will increase the fees on everything and the needs of low-income, minority, disabled students won’t matter. Student equity will be a moot point. Tuition increase will further student inequality in having access to a college education for those who choose that path.
Why not just raise the Fees for FOREIGN Students that are taking advantage of the system. Even when they Graduate the never seem to leave, it’s just a backdoor to a Work Permit/Citizenship. Whereas California Students (Mostly Male Caucasians) are forced to go out of state, and their parents have to pay more anyway! I thought (incorrectly) that CSU was for California students.
High school counselors should be pushing blue collar jobs.
The kind where it takes four semesters at a junior college and after a few years experience graduate can be making $70,000 – $100,000 with little to NO debt.
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A four year college education is over hyped and definitely way over priced.
That depends on the major. There a lot of majors where you often end up asking “you want fries with that?” You can’t do many jobs without at least a 4 year degree, such as engineering, biologist, chemist or many other well paying jobs.
Will they start teaching something useful if they raise the price. Go to a trade school kids so whan you graduate you will know something useful.
About a month ago I read a report that compared the number of college students to administration employees. It was equal or very close in almost all cases. For the largest universities in California, the employees equaled the number of students.
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