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Proposed $150 registrar document fee

The UC Berkeley Office of the Registrar is proposing to replace a number of Miscellanous Fees for ordering official documents (e.g. $15 to order a transcript) with a one-time $150 fee.

That new consolidated document fee will be paid by all undergraduate and graduate students in their first year of study, and would replace these individual fees “for life” (i.e. during the student’s degree an as an alum). First-year graduate students would have to pay the fee even if they also did they undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley.

Do you think a one-time fee of $150 is appropriate given the services you are currently paying for, or expect to pay for in the future, from the Registrar?

Read the background documents (Doc-1, Doc-2) about the new fee and let us know what you think. Please contact us before March 7th since the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees (CACSSF) will vote on whether or not to recommend this fee at its March 8th meeting.

Is nonresident enrollment a viable long-term solution to declining state support?

Although documents regarding the 2012-13 Berkeley budget process are still not available on the budget office website, a message sent last week to the campus committee by the Chancellor and Provost gives us a hint of what’s to come.

According to that letter, if the Governor’s proposal to cut $500 million from the UC system budget were implemented, the Berkeley campus is expected to bear 15% of that cut, or $75 million.

This amount ($75 million) also happens to be with the annual savings target contemplated by Operational Excellence (OE). However, according to a recent article from the Daily Californian, the potential cost savings from OE might have been overestimated, especially in the procurement sector where the target was $25-40 million. In addition, the estimated investments necessary to implement OE ($50-70 million in the first three years) could mean the initiative will actually increase campus expenses in the short term. Even in the long-term, any plan to operate with less revenue could not rely on OE alone.

The Committee on Student Fees has learned that the main component of the Berkeley adminstration response to State budget cuts will be to increase nonresident (out of state and international) undergraduate student enrollment.

It has already been reported that Berkeley is preparing to increase the fraction of nonresidents from 11% to 20% of the total undergraduate population in the next five years. The supplemental tuition for nonresident undergraduates is currently above $22,000 a year. Enrolling 2,500 extra nonresident undergraduates in the place of resident undergraduates (to achieve the 20% target) would therefore generate $55 million a year at current tuition levels.

This proposal, of course, assumes there is enough interest from out of state and international students to enroll in Berkeley at the current nonresident tuition levels. Furthermore, such a doubling of the out of state and international undergraduate population raises many important questions on the future of Berkeley and the UC:

• How will the UC system manage the reduction of access for Californians, and mostly likely those from low-income backgrounds, which is an inevitable consequence of such a plan? Will this lead to a renewed commitment from the public to invest in the UC, or will it create a vicious circle (less public funds => fewer Californians can send their children to the UC => fewer support for the UC statewide => less public funds)?
• Would this create a budget gap between campuses which do enroll large numbers of nonresident students (UCLA and UC Berkeley) and other UC campuses which cannot access this source of revenue? In that case, would the UC President and Board of Regents redistribute resources within the UC system to support the other campuses?
• How is UC Berkeley prepared to accomodate a rapid increase in international student enrollment, most of whom face specific challenges (English as a second language, finding affordable housing, etc.) ?

What are your thoughts on these incoming changes to our campus?

Thoughts on the executive pension fight: Can students force change through the courts?

Until Gov. Jerry Brown announced a budget plan [1] that would cut a further $500 million from the University of California (stay tuned for more coverage of the California budget on this blog), the biggest UC news story of the winter break was the letter from 36 UC executives – including the Deans of BerkeleyLaw and the Haas School of Business – threatening to sue the university if it didn’t follow-up on a alleged ten-year-old promise to increase the pension of employees earning over $245,000. [2]

Predictably, the letter generated little support from students, faculty and staff. As the UC President and the Chair of the Board of Regents publicly stated that they had no obligation to increase the pension [3], we are left to see whether the 36 executives will take the UC to court. That brings us to our main reason for discussing the pension fight here: if UC employees can sue the university for allegedly breaking its promise, what about us students? Could we challenge mid-year fee increases, or professional degree fees that break with the Regents’ own policy? [4]

“Know your fees” section completed

Our site now contains information on all types of fees charged to UC Berkeley students, where they came from, how they’re being used, and more. The rest of the website should be fully operational in the next week.