Roughly 70 students opposing a proposed 5 percent bump in tuition and fees marched and rallied at Chico State yesterday.
On Tuesday, trustees of the 23-campus system scheduled a vote on the increase for March. If approved as written, basic tuition would rise to $5,745. That’s before other mandatory fees, campus fees, department fees, textbooks, food or housing.
First-year student Alejandro Alfaro.
“They raise our tuition and then dare to ask why we don’t graduate,” he said.
Administrators say they need the increase to accommodate higher enrollment and to offset reduced support from Sacramento.
Criminal justice major Delia Armenta said the tuition increase would present a significant hardship.
“I’d probably have to drop out,” she said.
Jeremy Markley, a senior and armed forces veteran, said he’d be unable to attend without the GI Bill.
“A lot of people, within living memory, remember when it was completely free,” he said. “This was an institution that used to be where regular actual people could afford college.”
He added that rising costs violate the university’s most basic principle.
“And if regular actual people can’t afford to go to college, then the CSU system has failed.”