Graduate Tuition to Rise?

As noted in the prior blog post, the Regents are meeting this week. One item before them is a report on graduate student tuition and sources of support. You can see one typical graphic from that report above. The report concludes:

Next Steps for Graduate Tuition Increases

The enormous shortfall in State support of the University’s budget has required the University to make difficult and painful choices. Tuition increases have been used as a last resort to preserve the quality of a UC education. To date, the University has adopted a strategy of across-the-board tuition increases for all students – coupled with significant campus flexibility to offset the increases for students and/or faculty researchers – to address this issue. The new funding streams model further emphasizes campus flexibility in funding decisions.

In anticipation of a possible action in November, the Regents may want to discuss whether or not to increase graduate student tuition for 2012-13. If tuition is not increased, should budget shortfalls in graduate student support be met by reducing funding of other campus programs?

And should undergraduate tuition be raised to a higher level than graduate student tuition?

There are a number of other issues regarding graduate student tuition, including whether or not non-resident graduate tuition should be higher than that of resident graduate students. As requested by the Regents’ Chair and the Chair of the Finance Committee, the administration and the faculty are committed to explore this topic in great detail in the coming months and will bring back the results of their deliberations for further discussion by the Regents in Spring 2012.

Full report at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/sept11/e2.pdf