The University of California Board of Regents has voted to impose a tuition increase of $3,402 for incoming nonresident students, beginning next fall, according to EdSource.
The board officially approved the tuition hike Thursday, despite opposition from student leaders. With the increase, next year’s total cost of tuition for new out-of-state students will be $52,536, plus individual campus fees. That rate will remain frozen for this group of students for up to six years. The increase does not affect either current students or future graduate students.
University of California out-of-state students pay a supplemental tuition fee that’s added on top of what is charged to UC’s resident undergraduates. As a result of the board’s vote this week, that tuition supplement will jump by 9.9%, from $34,200 to $37,602 annually.
New students who are California residents will not face this increase, but they will still pay a tuition hike because of inflation-adjusted increases that UC approved in 2021. That will result in next year’s incoming class of in-state students paying about $500 more in tuition than new students entering the university this year.
University officials defended the increase in part by comparing UC’s out-of-state tuition rates to other major public universities like those in Virginia and Michigan, where the total cost of attendance is more than $7,000 lower than for nonresident students attending UC institutions.
“We were quite a bit behind. And so that’s why we looked at whether we had some headroom to raise it,” said Nathan Brostrom, UC’s CFO in an interview reported by EdSource.
However, a major impetus for the new increase is that the UC system is facing the possibility of a massive shortfall in its budget for next year. If the state of California follows through on its plan to reduce appropriations to UC by almost 8% next year, projections are that the system would be looking at a budget gap of almost $505 million.
Systemwide, nonresident students made up 16.6% of UC undergraduates in Fall 2023, although that percentage varies considerably among the nine campuses in the system that educate undergraduates. Officials are projecting that the tuition increase will generate about $41 million in new revenue for the system each year.
“As UC prepares for an anticipated state budget cut that could impact student services across the entire system, we are proposing an increase to support core operations without raising costs for current students and California residents,” wrote UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez in an email.