Editorial: Students win with court ruling over fee hikes

Students who have decided to attend a particular university have
the right to know roughly how much their education will cost over
the next few years.

That is why a San Francisco Superior Court judge was right to
issue a temporary injunction against the University of California,
forcing the system to return $15 million to professional-school
students.

The UC raised fees for the professional schools in the spring of
2003 and again for the 2004-2005 school year. The increases were
part of the UC’s overall plan for dealing with state budget
shortfalls and subsequent cuts to the university’s public
funding.

But the fee increases were not done in a fair or reasonable way.
Rather than increasing fees a little at a time, or only for new
students, the UC chose to hike fees for some students by as much as
30 percent. Some fee hikes were also conducted mid-year, giving the
students almost no chance to react to the increases.

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, the temporary injunction is
a significant victory in the ongoing struggle about the role of
student fees within the UC system.

Are fees a minor contribution to a student’s education, or
are they tuition, with a semantic twist?

With the regents as a defendant in a lawsuit, it’s easy to
speculate how they would answer the question.