Paly graduates attending University of California schools are responding with anger and frustration toward the recent 32-percent tuition increase approved by UC regents on Thursday, Nov. 19.
The increase, decided by a vote of 20-1 by UC regents, will raise undergraduate tuition from $7,788 to $10,302 next fall, and a 15-percent increase will begin this January, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Students staged protests on many of the UC campuses in response to the tuition hike, including demonstrations at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
Laura Mitchell, a 2005 Paly graduate who attends UC Davis, said she was outraged by the tuition hike.
“It makes it impossible for an entire demographic of students to afford college education, which I think is essentially criminal,” Mitchell said.
Students staged a peaceful protest at UC Davis’ Mrak Hall on Thursday night in response to the tuition increases, according to Mitchell, who said 52 students were arrested and held until Friday morning.
Mitchell said protests are the most effective way to voice student opinions.
“I think that protests are a great way to deal with this kind of situation,” Mitchell said. “Students have tried to make their voices heard in other ways, but basically they [the administrators] refused to hear it. At this point we’re using the tools that we have available to us.”
Many students feel the tuition increases are unfair because similar cuts are not being made from administrators’ salaries, according to 2009 Paly graduate Seung-Yeon Choi, who attends UC Berkeley.
“I was very disappointed that they [the UC] decided to increase our fees by 32 percent because a lot of this money is going towards larger paychecks for the chancellor and colleagues,” Choi said.
Other students including 2008 graduate Zal Dordi, who attends UC Davis, say that the tuition increases are necessary to maintain the UC system.
“My opinion on the matter is that these cuts in the budget and increases in fees are necessary for the survival of the UC system,” Dordi said. “California’s state fiscal crisis is not going away any time soon and as regrettable that it is to make such large cuts in public education, it is necessary to do so in order to get the state, and more specifically the UC system, out of this crisis.”