Lt. Gov. Kounalakis, CSU students discuss proposed tuition hike

With many California State University students, faculty and staff opposing the system’s proposed 6% annual tuition hike over the next five years,  Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis met with student leaders at Cal State Los Angeles on Friday to discuss anticipated impacts of the embattled increase.

“My first response was shock, and mostly because the trustees did a study on how much money they need to operate the system — which is valid — but they have not studied what the impact of our system as a whole is going to be on increasing tuition,” Kounalakis said, in an interview after the roundtable concluded.

The CSU Board of Trustees’ Committee on Finance weighed the proposal on July 11 and decided to send it to the full board for final approval. CSU officials say is necessary to help offset a $1.5 billion funding gap.

The board will likely hear the item in September, though the date won’t be confirmed until the agenda for that month’s meeting is released.

A CSU workgroup first identified the massive funding gap in a nearly 70-page report released in May. It found that the system only has enough money to pay for about 85% of the actual costs of education, institutional and academic support and student services at all of its 23 campuses.

That’s largely because the CSU’s two primary revenue sources — funding from California’s budget and tuition — haven’t kept up with the ever-increasing costs of operating the nation’s largest state university system, the report said. About 60% of the CSU’s operating budget is funded by the state; the remaining 40% comes from tuition revenue.

Kounalakis sits on all three governing boards of California’s public higher education system – UC, CSU and Community Colleges. The discussion was held at Cal State Los Angeles on Friday.

“They assume that there will be no impact, that is shocking to me because we know that our students already struggle to afford it,” Kounalakis said. “And anything that impacts our students impacts our system as a whole.”

Officials during a July 11 meeting called state funding volatile and highly dependent on external factors that impact economic stability. And though Gov. Gavin Newsom has agreed to a funding compact with the CSU that will provide a 5% annual boost to its annual budget — amounting to a $227.3 million increase for this fiscal year — officials say it isn’t nearly enough to bridge the projected gap.

“Over the past two decades, state tax revenues that support public higher education institutions have significantly fluctuated,” said Ryan Storm, the CSU’s Assistant Vice Chancellor for Budget, “with a trend toward a decrease in real dollars across the country and within California.”

The state’s share of funding for the CSU total operating budget, Storm said, has declined from about 90% in the 1980s to 60% currently.

The CSU secondary source of funding, tuition revenues, has been stagnant for nearly a decade. The last tuition hike — which was 5%, or $270 a semester — came during the 2011-12 academic year.

Several Finance Committee members on Tuesday said tuition hikes aren’t ideal — but felt obligated to support the proposal because of the CSU’s current financial situation.

Students and faculty, meanwhile, said they oppose the proposed tuition hikes — arguing that the Board’s proposal is unfair to students.

“The students are the most important voice in all this,” said Kounalakis. “I’m standing with our students and organizing to insist that the CSU study the impacts prior to increasing tuition.”

“The CSU is one of the greatest drivers of social mobility,” she said.

Kounalakis said that meeting with the student leaders was just one way to hear their stories and what it takes for students to be able to access the CSU system – already difficult for many grappling with such responsibilities as balancing work and school.

The CSU, though, argues that the tuition increases are necessary not only to provide students with the level of education and academic support they’ve repeatedly asked the system to provide but to comply with several unfunded mandates it will eventually have to pay for in order to maintain compliance with federal and state educational regulations.

Tuition would go up another 6% annually for the next five years. By the spring 2029 semester, full-time undergrads would be required to pay $7,682 for the academic year, while higher-level programs, such as a doctorate in public health would total about $25,000 per year.

The CSU, in its report, said that the proposed tuition increases wouldn’t change its status among the most affordable higher education systems in the country. It also added that about 60% of its student population would be unaffected by the change because of grants or fee waivers.

“The Chancellor’s Office likes to talk a lot about how we do have some of the lowest tuition rates of any four-year university system in this country, it’s the design, they talked about it in the context of they can raise it and still be good but (students) should be at the forefront,” said Dominic Quan Treseler, president of the California State Student Association, on Friday.

Treseler added the conversation surrounding the increase in tuition doesn’t recognize the students that don’t necessarily belong to the middle class and don’t receive financial aid.

Another large group of students that will be greatly affected, he added, are undocumented people. A topic that was discussed during the roundtable.

“The Lieutenant Governor really pushed us and encouraged us to expand our possibilities and our mindset regarding this raise, whereas in the spaces we’ve been in it’s been presented to us as inevitable,” he said, “(Kounalakis) really empowered us to think of a possibility of it not going through and what we need to do in order to really best advocate for that.”

Treseler said that CSSA will be reevaluating some of the strategies regarding the raise to be stronger in the opposition and hold power together as students.