More than 460,000 students at the 23 California State University campuses could see annual tuition increases in coming years — for the first time in nearly a decade.
The CSU Board of Trustees’s Committee on Finance will weigh a proposal on Tuesday, July 11, that would implement 6% tuition hikes every year starting in the fall 2024 and ending in the spring 2029 semesters. The potential move, university officials say, is necessary to cover $1.5 billion of unfunded operational costs in the system’s budget, though students and others say it could financially harm students — and further hurt enrollment.
The proposal will require full board approval, which would likely happen sometime in September.
A CSU workgroup first identified the massive funding gap in a nearly 70-page report released in May. It found that the system only has enough money to pay for about 85% of the actual costs of education, institutional and academic support, and student services at all of its campuses.
That’s largely because the CSU’s two primary revenue sources — funding from California’s budget and tuition — haven’t kept up with the ever-increasing costs of operating the nation’s largest state univeristy system, the report said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in 2022, proposed an agreement with both the CSU and University of California systems to increase state funding to both by 5% annually for five years.
Officials from both systems hailed the funding compact, saying it would bring much-needed stability to their budgets and support long-term educational investments.
Despite problems within its own budget — including a 2023-24 shortfall of about $31.5 billion dollars — the state still set aside the agreed upon 5%, or $227.3 million, for the CSU’s base budget this fiscal year.
That compact with the state, according a CSU finance committee report for the Tuesday meeting, is expected to add $1.3 billion in new funding to the CSU’s budget by 2028-29, if the agreement…
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