Slates should focus discussion on university fees

The votes have been counted, and now the newly elected undergraduate student government administration has time to ponder which campaign promises are actually deliverable before they take office next fall.

Candidates campaigned on a number of issues that I’m sure have real merit and potential to improve the undergraduate experience for many students. But with our state and the University of California as a whole facing budgetary uncertainty, now is one of the most critical points in the history of UCLA, and the identity of our university may be changing.

Two of the three points of the Students First! platform are “making a UC education more affordable and increasing underrepresented students’ access to education,” but I didn’t hear a lot about these “bigger” issues from either slate.

I’m talking mostly about tuition and aid-setting policies. Former Chancellor Albert Carnesale pushed for increases in both tuition and financial aid in 2004. This practice, known as the “higher-fee, higher-aid” tuition model works by increasing base tuition and using enough of that increase for financial aid to ensure that low-income students are not adversely affected by the change.

Not to be alarmist, but this is going to happen in some way or another. How exactly this incipient policy will take shape, however, is still very much in debate. Other top public institutions, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia, charge higher in-state tuition ($10,447 and $8,690, respectively, compared to our $7,038 “registration fee”) and also have a higher percentage of affluent students from out of state or abroad who pay a higher nonresident tuition rate. The University of Michigan also charges juniors and seniors a different rate ($11,775 for residents) than it charges freshmen or sophomores. These things allow institutions to not depend as heavily on state funding, which is our biggest problem in California.

So let’s play this out hypothetically at UCLA with pretend fees becoming $15,000 per year ““ the low end of Carnesale’s estimate. In theory, affluent students could afford the increase in tuition, so it’s not a problem for them, and low-income students could end up paying the same through increased financial aid. How it affects middle-class students remains to be seen.

There are many big questions, however, about how a high-fee, high-aid policy for the UC would take shape.

How a policy such as this would affect middle-class students depends on where exactly on the income scale the higher aid kicks in, or if that aid comes to students in the form of grants or loans. Also to be seen is the effect of “sticker shock” on low and middle-income students and families who see the price of tuition and are turned off from attending the university, regardless of increased available aid.

This is a well-documented phenomenon that ties into the lack of proper information getting to families of first-generation college applicants and the lack of college counseling in underresourced schools ““ schools that primarily serve students of lower socioeconomic status.

UCLA is especially proud of its socioeconomic diversity, with more students receiving Pell grants here than at any other institution in the country.

With our state in fiscal crisis and a brand new chancellor at the helm, very important decisions are being discussed and made about who will pay what to attend UCLA. These decisions will possibly have a dramatic effect on who will be able to attend UCLA in the future.

That’s exactly why now is so crucial; it’s an institutional identity check, and it’s our students especially who need to affirm that identity, to voice who we are, to voice what’s important to our students and our campus.

New Undergraduate Students Association Council, you have waiting allies in the Graduate Students Association and the University of California Student Association.

USAC elections are an important process, and it gives the Daily Bruin a lot to cover. But with much of last week’s USAC elections coverage devoted to breaking down the slates, I was alarmed by the graphic in between Tristan Reed’s column and my own showing a shift in funding between identity-based, queer and Greek system organizations with a concurrent shift in slate representation. Is that all that this slate system is about ““ resource allocation?

Could it be that the dual-slate system has replicated the bipartisan power grab that is our own national political system? I hope not, because there are much bigger pies to divide and much bigger battles we all share as UCLA students.

E-mail Aikins at [email protected] if you want to weigh in on high-fee, high-aid policy. Send general comments to [email protected].