Tuition

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.

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.

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)

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.

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 ...