Fee
increases to help close salary lag
By
Joseph Serna
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant City Editor
The California State University student fee is projected to increase 10 percent
every year until at least 2011/12.
By 2011/12, a CSU student would pay a projected annual university fee of $3,984.
“
I think the crux is to get the state legislature to provide more funding,” said
Claudia Keith, assistant vice chancellor of Public Affairs.
Though an annual 10 percent hike in student fees is tentative depending on
state funding, Keith said, the CSUs have a concurrent five-year plan in line
for increasing executive compensation for university faculty and presidents.
Starting in the 2005/06 fiscal year, university presidents are scheduled to
get an annual salary increase of 13 percent for five years, according to the
CSU Committee of University and Faculty Personnel minutes from Oct. 27 of that
year.
The annual five-year, 13 percent raise would help close an almost 50 percent
salary lag behind presidents of similar public universities.
Since the CSU Board of Trustees’s Blue Ribbon Committee, reported to
the board about the system’s status on executive compensation, the board
has given an almost annual raise to CSU presidents.
According to the Blue Ribbon committee that reported to the board of trustees,
the CSUs are in the lower tier for faculty and executive compensation.
Altogether, the average CSU president salary has increased 43 percent in those
years, from an average salary of $173,189 to $248,858.
The CSU Board of Trustees is trying to align executive compensation for its
university’s presidents with those of similar public universities around
the country, Keith said.
Except for 2003 and 2004, university presidents have been approved for a salary
increase every year from 1998 to 2005.
Student Trustee Corey Jackson asked the committee how such salary adjustments
would be funded. The then-Executive
Vice Chancellor Richard West said 35 percent would come from student fees and
the rest from other means, according to committee minutes.
“
One doesn’t pay for the other,” Keith said of student fees paying
for annual raises for CSU executives.
State university fees have increased 67 percent from 1998 to 2005, from $1,506
to $2,520.
Of the 15 comparable institutions, the average CSU student fee is the lowest.
The cost of living has also increased significantly since 1998, with all items
being on average almost 30 percent more expensive, according to the Consumer
Price Index for California.
The cost of living has little to do with student tuition, Keith said. She attributes
the fee adjustments on the general funding by the state and funding an annual
enrollment growth of about 2.5 percent.
State university fees hinge on general funding provided by the state, when
state funding is decreased, university fees will increase, Keith said.
California increased its general funding for the CSUs nearly 7 percent from
2005/06 to 2006/07; however the state university fee still increased 8 percent
in the same year.
Since 1998, general funding from the state to the CSUs has only decreased in
three years.
From the second half of 2005 to 2007, general funding for CSUs is projected
to bounce back 12 percent, giving the CSUs more funding than was available
in 2002.
However, student fees have continued to rise.
In the three years of decreased state general funding, students expectedly
saw dramatic university fee increases.
Yet as state funding has gradually flowed back into the CSUs, its temporary
lull being the reason for university fee increases according to Keith, CSU
tuition is still rising an average of 8 percent a year. A 10 percent fee increase
is projected for the 2007/08 academic year.
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