UC regents vote to continue annual tuition hikes, despite student opposition

This story was updated at 7 p.m. on Nov. 19 with details from the UC regents meeting.

Despite fierce protest from students, the University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday voted to renew its policy of regular annual tuition hikes largely tied to the cost of inflation.

Regents approved the tuition hike 13-3 and requested to review the plan in seven years. The renewed policy is a continuation of what UC calls its tuition stability plan that went into effect in 2022. As before, the amount that tuition is raised each year depends largely on inflation, but there are key differences.

The renewed plan raises tuition each year by a minimum of 1% and a maximum of 5%. 

Each student has their incoming tuition rate frozen for up to six years. The renewed policy will begin to affect how much tuition rises for incoming students in the 2027-28 school year. 

Students protested on campuses throughout the UC system. Shouting “Stop raising tuition!” and “Where’s that money going?” they also disrupted and briefly postponed the presentation at the regents’ meeting at UCLA.

The renewal comes against the backdrop of a year when state funding has decreased and the Trump administration has threatened to cut the $17 billion in annual federal funding that the UC system receives.

The office of UC President James Milliken proposed raising tuition 1% every year, in addition to inflation, to support capital improvements, such as seismic retrofitting and a rapidly growing backlog of deferred maintenance.

Regents discussed the importance of capital improvements, which are routinely put on the back burner over more popular direct services such as counseling and other student services.

“Nobody budgets sufficiently for deferred maintenance,” Milliken said.

Ultimately, regents agreed to raise tuition by an additional 1% but voted to allow individual campuses to decide whether to use that funding for capital improvements or other, more pressing needs.

This renewed policy maintains a 5% cap on annual increases, but it also allows any amount over 5% to be “banked” for future years. This means that if the calculated increase for a given year totaled 7%, the University of California would only be able to raise tuition 5% because of the cap. However, the system would be able to tack that remaining 2% onto a tuition hike the following year to help the system “catch up” with inflation.

Regent Michael Cohen said this approach, which moderately raises tuition each year, has been an improvement from the years in the wake of the Great Recession, when double-digit tuition hikes to make up for budget shortfalls were routine. It offers greater predictability, he said, for both families footing the bill and the UC system itself.

Milliken pointed out that tuition for UC Berkeley, widely recognized as a top public university, is $14,400. 

“That’s an incredible value, but there are two components to value. There is not just the cost, there’s the quality,” he said. “I believe we have an obligation to maintain that level of quality, so it continues to be the great value that it is.”

The University of California Student Association (UCSA), which represents 230,000 undergraduates throughout the nine UC campuses, opposed this plan, saying the proposal will subject future generations of students to higher tuition at a time when students are already struggling with housing costs, food, textbooks, parking and other cost-of-living expenses.

This is a model establishing “annual, forever tuition hikes,” said Aditi Hariharan, UCSA president and a UC Davis senior, in a statement. “When cuts are being made across the board, the answer cannot be to raise tuition and pass the price tag onto the future students of the UC and their families.”

The University of California Office of the President estimates that 54% of California resident undergraduates would receive enough aid to offset any tuition increases. 

But former Student Regent Alexis Atsilvsgi Zaragoza called in during public comment to say that too many students — including low-income or even homeless students — had slipped through the cracks of the cohort tuition model and lengthy appeals process.

When regents first passed this tuition hike plan, 33% of tuition was returned to students in financial aid, but that number rose to 45%. This renewal reduces that number to 40%.

The average net cost of attendance for students whose families earn more than $120,000 is expected to be higher under a renewed plan, but over a third of families who make between $120,000 and $180,000 would have their increases covered by financial aid.