We have all seen the infamous emails we have been receiving with the recognized heading- “Attention: Important Information Regarding Your Enrollment Fees”. Effective for the Fall 2009 semester, the California State Legislature agreed on increasing our fees from the comfortable $20 per unit to $26 per unit. Sadly, community colleges are not the only ones being affected.
Many students consider these increases an inconvenience for the grounds that students were notified of these added fees after many had already enrolled in their classes over the summer. Our costs were then reassessed on August 2nd – had a student not pay his or her additional fees by the date specified, a resulted drop for “non-payment” would take place.
According to a report in June 2009 by Jessika Jones of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, “The most recent budget proposal for the community college system reduces current and budget year spending by nearly $820 million.” We can all agree $820 million is an overwhelming amount, and unfortunately this looks as if it this may just be the beginning.
These changes affect us students in more ways than expected. The report “Update on the Federal Stimulus Package and Funding to Higher Education” goes further in explaining how the UC and CSU systems have already began making changes including reducing the number of students entering for 2009-10. Cal State Universities are increasing their fees by 10% and the UC system by 9.3%.
The trickling effect of all this includes a dramatic loss in students attending community colleges each semester, and even fewer students transferring out.
I spoke with full-time Mesa student Emily Elghanian, and asked her how she felt about these newly increased fees. Her response was like many- “I personally feel that increasing the price of units is ridiculous. With these tough economic times I thought twenty dollars a unit was getting pricey. Don’t students already have enough to worry about? The last thing we should have to lose sleep over is how we are going to financially educate ourselves. I just hope the California State Legislature doesn’t decide to increase even more fees next semester and the semesters to follow, unless their intentions are to expect to see less and less students enrolling.”
Student Jamy Pitts was rather on the fence when I asked her how she felt about the fee increases. She pondered for a brief moment and began to explain to me why she didn’t know exactly how to feel about the issue. “Obviously, no one likes to hear about more bills to pay. But when it comes to budget cuts and money issues regarding our schools, more than just students are affected. We have to consider the roles of our professors, janitors, and school faculty. When the school is in financial dilemma, I can’t imagine any other way for the school to get money other then raising a little bit of everyone’s fees. I appreciate it when we have newer buildings, parking lots, and equipment (even when construction may be an inconvenience at times). I wouldn’t want even more money to come out of the paychecks of hardworking teachers and staff. I ess I’m alright with it only being raised six dollars a unit, but if it continues to escalate in price- I can’t say I’d be too pleased.”
To receive more information on budget cuts and fee increases, you can read Governor Schwarzenegger’s Higher Education Proposal on publications from the website www.cpec.ca.gov/completereports .