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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Raise Fees

Update 11/17 (Patrick): Deans E and H have promulgated a fact sheet (pdf) regarding fees, complete with a Kashmiri disclaimer and this cheerful observation: "With the sharp spike in system?wide fee increases, we expect to meet our policy benchmark of 90% of market rate in 2011?12, one year earlier than we had originally anticipated. You will note that fees for non?resident students will be at market rates next year."

You can find a more detailed breakdown, courtesy of BHSA, by clicking here (pdf).

The UC Regents are voting next week to increase Boalt professional fees for residents by $6,072 (~22%) next year, part of which we will start paying for next semester. For non-residents, professional fees will go up by $1,827 (~7%). Yudof and his finance committee just released this yesterday: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov09/f2.pdf

The proposal charts out an astronomical climb in residents' fees from the current $36,487 to $44,220 next year, and $52,000 by 2013 (non-residents will see their fees increase from $48,732 to $52,220 next year.)

As 1Ls, we feel blind-sided by an increase of this magnitude. For many of us, the comparatively reasonable cost of attendance at Boalt was an important factor in our decision to attend. We anticipated the university would act reasonably and in good faith, entailing increases of - gee, I dunno... 3-5% annually? But 22%?

Thoughts.

- L'Alex and Jackie O

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on November 16, 2009 (boomark / email).