Tuition

Harvard University will raise undergraduate tuition 3.5%, to $33,696 a year, and reconsider its planned expansion into Boston's Allston neighborhood after record losses to its endowment. Construction of a science complex will slow this year and broader plans for developing the Allston campus are delayed, President Drew Gilpin Faust said in a letter posted on Harvard's website. The Cambridge, Mass., school said in December that its endowment, the richest in education, lost $8 billion, or 22%, in the four months that ended Oct. 31.

University of California regents Wednesday discussed the possibility of a 6% tuition increase for next fall but pledged that they would lobby hard to avoid such a $732-per-student hike. With such money worries rippling through the 10-campus system, the regents approved the hiring of a new chancellor for UC San Diego at a $411,084 salary, which is 4.8% higher than his predecessor, Marye Anne Fox. In addition, Pradeep Khosla, now the engineering dean at Carnegie Mellon University, will receive a relocation bonus of nearly $24,700 annually for his first four years.

For 50 years, they've avoided it. But California's public universities are now inching closer to using the word they've long viewed as taboo: tuition. Unlike schools in every other state, California's public campuses in effect have banned official use of the word and what it means — that students pay at least a hefty share, if not most, of their education costs. The state's renowned master plan for higher education, which in 1960 established separate roles for the University of California, California State University and the community colleges, also declared that the public institutions "shall be tuition free to all residents."

Students at six Cal State University campuses have vowed to fast until university leaders agree to freeze tuition, roll back administrative and executive salaries, and meet other demands. Members of Students for Quality Education said that the hunger strike will begin Wednesday and involve 13 students at the Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento and San Bernardino campuses. In addition to a five-year tuition freeze and administrative pay cuts, students are calling for more free speech rights on campus and the elimination of housing and car allowances for the system's 23 campus presidents.

More than 250 UC Irvine students, faculty and staff members marched through the campus Friday and called on state legislators to stop fee increases, pay reductions and program cutbacks. The crowd waved banners, blew whistles and chanted "No more fee hikes!" as they weaved through campus and finally stopped at the administration building, where speakers vented their anger. Demonstration leaders and state Sen.

The Marlborough School, where two of Jody Fay's daughters are enrolled, is the kind of educational establishment she always dreamed of for her children: The private, all-girls school in Hancock Park offers small classes, specialized courses, individualized attention from top instructors. Sending her girls there is a gift, Fay believes, that will last a lifetime. And it is a gift that does not come cheap.

Leaders of a Cal State Northridge student body that is struggling with fewer classes and services and higher fees organized a meeting Monday to grill state legislators and campus administrators about the budget crunch. But when the appointed hour rolled around at noon, all but about 25 of the legions of students who trooped by were headed for a different kind of grill--the one serving lunch in the University Union. Many of those chatting with friends nearby weren't sure of the event's purpose.

The article on CBN University ("The Apostles of Christian Film Making," by Lewis Beale, April 17) overstates the CBNU average tuition fourfold. Tuition is currently $80 per quarter hour, which at 10 hours per quarter yields an average cost of $800 or $3,200 per year , not per quarter as indicated. (Sixty percent of our students receive financial aid, all of which comes from private gifts and grants and none from federal or state sources.) GERALD L. COOPER Vice President, Development CBN University Virginia Beach, Va.

The Times' July 20 editorial, " UC gets smarter about cuts, applauds the efforts of the University of California system to boost revenues by increasing enrollment of higher-paying out-of-state students. While providing desperately needed funds in the short run, this strategy is essentially a "beggar thy neighbor" policy applied to public education; that is, an attempt to recruit "outsiders" to pay for the void created by declining local support. The politically driven scenario to maintain low resident tuition and enroll nonresident students leads to a fascinating paradox.

Congratulations to the students of California State University. Finally, the $4,000-plus they pay to attend will be called "tuition" ? which is what it actually is, although for years California maintained the polite fiction that students at UC and CSU were just paying "fees," as though this was pin money to cover the cost of a campus dance. FOR THE RECORD: Dudamel: A Nov. 13 editorial said that tickets to Gustavo Dudamel's first concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic "sold out in record time.

Among all the painfully underfunded programs in California, which ones should receive extra money if the state were to suddenly bring in an extra billion dollars a year? That's like asking a cash-strapped homeowner who comes into a few thousand dollars which house repair he would tackle after years of deferring the most basic projects. Replace the dying furnace or the balky toilets? How about the dangerously faulty electrical wiring? Chances are the homeowner wouldn't put a new granite countertop at the top of the list, yet that's in effect what a pair of legislative proposals, SB 1500 and 1501, by Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles)

The 10 campuses of the UC system should be given more power to govern themselves and be allowed to set their own tuition, decide how many out-of-state students to enroll, approve construction projects and control some investments under a proposal released Monday by UC Berkeley leaders. The plan, which is already provoking debate, would maintain the central Board of Regents for such overarching policy matters as admissions standards, state funding and top appointments. But it contends that UC has gotten so complex and governance has become so balky that campus governing boards should be established and given autonomy over many issues, similar to states in a federal system.

While her classmates agonize over which college to attend, high school senior Samantha Morgan is passing up offers from Cal State campuses in Long Beach and San Jose. She is heading out of California to avoid overcrowded classes and other state budget problems. And she can afford it thanks to a little-known program that offers discounts at public colleges and universities to students from 15 states, most of them in the West. Morgan is taking advantage of the Western Undergraduate Exchange to enroll at Northern Arizona University this fall.

Nearing midnight and with the sting of pepper spray in the air, Santa Monica College trustees wondered how their plan to offer a selection of higher cost classes this summer had come to be so misunderstood. For many on the eight-member panel, which includes a humanities professor, an ACLU board member and a college counselor, the plan was conceived as a progressive response to drastic state funding cuts and was intended to increase access and allow more students to graduate and transfer.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California. There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later.

SAN FRANCISCO — University of California President Mark G. Yudof on Wednesday strongly backed Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax increase aimed for the November ballot, warning of big tuition increases next year if it fails and offering hope that tuition would remain stable if it passes. Yudof urged the regents, who were meeting in San Francisco, to endorse the governor's tax plan at a future session. "In my view, it represents the best opportunity I've seen in my four years in California for the state to clamber out of a sinkhole of fiscal uncertainty and move forward into a better, more prosperous future," he said.

In the biggest test so far of Britain's coalition government, a divided Parliament voted Thursday to nearly triple the amount that universities can charge for tuition, despite the wrath of thousands of student protesters who organized marches and sit-ins across the country. Demonstrations outside the Houses of Parliament turned violent as lawmakers debated the measure for several hours. Protesters attacked government buildings and hurled flares and billiard balls at police officers in riot gear and on horseback.

In my opinion, college fees are "tuition" (May 19). Right now I am going through the struggle of being able to afford my college "fees," and the fees continue to rise every year. I had always assumed that the money I have been paying for college was being used for instruction and faculty salaries. My fear is that if we decide to change the word from fees to tuition , we will give the board the liberty to make a considerable increase in the amount that we have to pay now. Will we be subjected to paying both tuition and fees?

Many moons ago, I went to California public schools, then on to a community college and later got my degree from a state university. And I can tell you we had some complaints. They weren't using enough turf builder on the outfield grass. The band instruments had been around a few years. And the San Jose State student newspaper only published five days a week. The problems are a little different these days. My daughter attends elementary school in Los Angeles Unified, which has just sent out 11,700 layoff notices in the latest round of miserable news.

Tuition and fees* for in-state students at some major universities University of Michigan: $13,961 UC Berkeley: $12,835 University of Colorado, Boulder: $10,098 University of Connecticut: $10,670 University of Texas, Austin: $9,794 University of Oregon: $8,789 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: $7,008 Source: The College Board * 2011-12 academic year ...