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Recently we have seen a host of university campuses across California protesting, sometimes even violently about the escalating student fees. This has resulted in a move by Sacramento lawmakers who are proposing caps on the skyrocketing fees.

At least four proposals were put forward to the Senate committee regarding the capping on student fee growth annually and ensuring sufficient delay between the approval of the fee raise and its implementation. The proposal also includes a state constitution amendment and was laid out by members of both the parties. The following weeks will see them merging into a single bill. 
According to Los Angeles County Sen. Carol Liu, the inevitable increase in fee structure must be predictable and gradual.

The four proposals put forth before the senate committee include –

Fee increase must be capped at a 10 percent minimum every year for CSU students and must have a waiting period of 180 days. This proposal was put forth by R-Merced’s Senator Jeff Denham.

UC Regents must be made to adopt the changes by state constitution amendment. According to Denham’s bill, changes to UC can only be recommended by the Legislature. However, CSU can be dictated by them for changes according to the current law.

Once the students are enrolled, there must be no fee increase every year after that. CSU students funded education cost must be limited. Fee increase for freshman classes must not be more than 5% of the previous batch. This proposal was introduced by D-Shafter Dean Florez.

Percentage of fees and fee itself must be limited to help students manage overall education cost levels. Liu introduced this proposal too.

Students in major organizations in California are not really thrilled about these proposals. They feel that this does not really address the underlying issue of lack of funding in California higher education.

Over the past decade, there has been a 200% increase in the fees for students of California University, 136% for students of community colleges and 210% for students of Cal State. Any discussion regarding reduction of fee is not welcome by the University of California Student Association as they firmly believe that students must be offered free higher education.

According to this association, lawmakers must look towards alternate methods and towards new revenues for higher education fund increase. They are supported in their sentiments by the State Student Association of California. According to the President of this association, there will be a severe slashing of academic offerings by the administrators in response to the fee cap.

A Humboldt State University student and leader of this organization Steve Dixon says that if the quality of education offered is terrible, then there is no point making it affordable. Drop in state funding will restrict higher education’s major component of funding and this will logically infer that students and parents will no more enjoy predictability and reliability, says CSU Assistant Vice Chancellor, Karen Zamarripa. She also said that in her 19 year career at CSU, she did not meet anyone who liked to pay increased fees.