Tuition

California's highest court is poised to be the next battleground in the debate over benefits for illegal immigrants as the justices have agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of a state law allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

At the UCLA studio of the American Society of Civil Engineers, undergraduates are engaged in such difficult extracurricular projects as designing and building a 20-foot-long concrete canoe to race against other California college teams. But the young engineers face a potentially tougher challenge as University of California leaders consider a plan to charge these students more for their undergraduate education than most others at the university. As part of a plan to plug UC's battered budget, the regents may vote as early as next month on the controversial, tradition-breaking proposal to require engineering undergraduates, along with those studying business, to pay $900 more a year than the rest of the student body.

If you're paying for a college education, you may need an advanced degree to figure out how to claim federal tax breaks for those expenses. Congress in recent years has approved myriad special credits, deductions and other tax breaks for people paying tuition bills and related costs, and new breaks and twists were added in the recent stimulus bill. The tax breaks can be generous, saving you as much as $2,500 per student.

University of California officials Wednesday said they will proceed with plans to seek a 9.3% hike in undergraduate student fees for next school year and warned that faculty and staff layoffs might be needed if state financing measures fail in the May election and the budget deficit worsens. The increase, amounting to $662, would bring the average basic cost for an undergraduate UC education to $8,720 a year for California residents, not including room, board and books.

Scott Lowe enlisted in the infantry -- the "dirtiest job there is" in the Army, he says -- completing two Iraqi tours in which he dug up weapons caches, found improvised explosive devices and rounded up insurgents. "No better way to serve your country," said Lowe, 27. "Most of us lost friends over there, had close calls. . . . Now it's time to catch up."

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.

In order to keep up with rising costs for undergraduates' education, the University of California should attempt to create a $2-billion endowment for extra financial aid, according to a report presented Wednesday to the Board of Regents. All of that money might come from private donations over the next 10 years or be split between such donations and state funds, suggested UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who headed a study group on the affordability of undergraduate education.

The prospect of a sharp reduction in state revenues for higher education triggered protests from students and anxiety among faculty and administrators at Thursday's meeting of the UC Board of Regents. The 10-campus UC system, which enrolls about 220,000 students, could face hikes in student fees, limits on enrollment and a salary freeze under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to cope with the state's budget gap.

State oversight of for-profit trade schools, which enroll 400,000 Californians a year, was set to vanish Monday, leaving students whose schools go out of business without access to state-arranged tuition refunds. Republicans in the Assembly rejected a measure Monday afternoon that would have replaced a law that expired at midnight. Disagreements among lawmakers, the schools and consumer advocates have led to a stalemate in the Capitol on this issue for more than three years.

A state appellate court has ruled that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a California law granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants can move forward. A group of out-of-state students and parents filed a lawsuit in 2005 in Yolo County Superior Court against California's public university and community college systems, alleging that they were being charged higher tuition and fees than undocumented immigrants.