The Usual

It’s now routine. The legislature cuts the UC budget and the Regents raise tuition. From Capitol Alert, 7/14/11:

University of California regents today voted to raise tuition by about $1,070, sending the total cost to $12,192 for the upcoming school year. After a recently approved $650 million cut in state funding, UC regents said they had no choice but to raise tuition to close about a quarter of the system's $1 billion budget deficit. When combined with a previous hike, tuition will be 18 percent more -- about $1,890 -- in fall 2011 than it was in fall 2010. Each campus also charges undergraduates about $1,000 in additional fees…

Four regents voted against the tuition increase: Eddie Island, Alfredo Mireles, George Marcus and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. "The biggest threat to our democracy is income inequality, the loss of the middle class," Newsom said. "And here we are once again, putting the nail in the coffin of the middle class. That's exactly who gets hurt in this debate." …

Regents also discussed other long-term solutions to the budget crunch, including charging international students higher rates, increasing online class offerings, being more aggressive about seeking private donations and consolidating some operations at each campus into one statewide office…

Full article: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/07/uc-tutition-hiked-to-12200-to.html

Well, if we can’t have the middle class, there is always:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: