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Tom Sayles at the UC Regents meeting earlier this month. Sayles is proposing a student fee system

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BWith many students still reeling from a 25 percent fee hike approved last week, the University of California Board of Regents may consider drastic revisions to the university’s student fee policy.

The goal of the policy change would be to make fee increases more gradual and predictable for students.

Although the regents voted 13 to 3 in favor of a fee increase, at least five expressed frustration that students had to absorb a large increase in a short period of time.

In addition, Regent Tom Sayles pushed a proposal of his own that would charge students from families of a certain income level an additional surcharge to mitigate the impact of fee hikes on students from lower-income families.

Both items could be up for discussion at the regents’ fall meetings, though some regents want to take action as early as September.

Regent Joanne Kozberg was one of those who called for a policy revision during the July meeting.

“We have to assume our responsibility to this institution ... and that means changing our fee policy to something that is moderate and predictable,” she said.

The source of the regents’ frustration lies in the economic boom of the 1990s. Because the UC is a state institution, the state pays most of the cost for in-state students, a cost that has gradually risen over the past several years. This means UC students should have experienced a slow rise in their fees as well.

However, because the California economy was in the midst of the dot-com bubble and seemed strong, the state bought out any increase in student cost to the UC. This has been state policy for the last seven years.

In fact, since the last fee increase during the 1994-1995 academic year, student fees had actually dropped 10 percent until the spring of 2003.

But now, with a crashed Internet economy and a $38 billion hole in the budget, the state can no longer afford to buy out student cost increases, and has left the UC to pick up the slack. The UC has done so with sharp cuts to university programs, slashed faculty pay raises and increased student fees.

Such a sudden about-face in economic fortunes has left some regents wondering why the board didn’t take advantage of a strong state economy, when students might have been able to cope with fee increases.

“We should have been in the position to raise fees when students could afford it,” said Regent Ward Connerly at the July meeting.

This has led Connerly, Kozberg, and three other regents to urge the board to look into a policy that would raise student fees slowly over the course of months or even years, rather than sending them skyrocketing within a few weeks.

But while a gradual fee increase might seem appealing, Student Regent Matt Murray cautions that, because of the state legislature’s tendency to make decisions for the short-term, a long-term policy might not work out as planned.

“The way that the university’s budget is decided upon is a highly political process, and I’m very skeptical that we could come up with a gradual fee policy that would actually work,” he said.

Taking a different approach to the fee problem is Sayles, who is advocating his own proposal that would bill students from families of an income over $90,000 an additional $1,000 to $3,000 on top of their fees.

The rationale behind the proposal, which is still in the early stages of formulation, is that it would shift the cost of a fee increase to those who could most likely afford it.

However, a university study has found some significant shortcomings in the proposal, especially since an income threshold for the surcharge has yet to be set and could be seen as arbitrary.

It is also unclear as to how much support the proposal would receive from students and regents, and some UCLA students expressed opposition to a surcharge.

“Just because they’re going to make more money we’re going to charge them more? I don’t think that’s right,” said Emmanuil Smorodinsky, a fifth-year business economics student.

Vivek Singh, a fourth-year MCD biology student, said he was worried that such a proposal would be socially divisive, splitting students into “classes.”

Sayles could not be reached for comment at press time.

Michigan State University experimented with an income-based fee system, when, in 1968, it began charging students based on a sliding scale of their parents’ income.

The formula was abandoned after two years because its administration proved too complex, and many parents complained about perceived inequalities.

In general, students at UCLA seem more concerned about how high their fees could climb rather than how or when they were implemented.

“As student fees go, there should definitely be a limit,” said Nick Dwork, a graduate student in biomedical engineering. “Or else you’ll be excluding students who could go to college from going to college.”

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