Students and staff at San José State are still trying to make sense of the tuition increase that took effect in the beginning of the academic year, according to a web page from the California State University (CSU) system.
The decision was approved by the CSU Board of Trustees to enact a multi-year increase in September of 2023 according to the same source, saying that the increase plans to benefit current and future students.
Recently reinstated Stan Nosek, SJSU interim vice president and administration and finance CFO, offered a little insight into the increase as to why it might have gotten put in place.
“Any time a tuition increase is looked at, it has to do with costs and services,” Nosek said. “In this case, my recollection is that we have not had a tuition increase for many years.”
According to a web page from the CSU, the last tuition increase occurred 12 years ago in which tuition increased by $270.
Nosek mentioned that a possible reason could have been due to a deficit in the budget of the CSU system.
“The reasons that we have to start increasing tuition (in) my understanding is there’s a lot of discussion and debate about that, but the Board of Trustees ultimately decided that costs were rising while our revenue was not so services had to be degraded and we had to start tuition increases again.”
The undergraduate tuition will increase by $342 per student for this academic school year, according to a webpage from the CSU.
The Spartan Daily reached out to CSU executive chancellor and CFO Steve Relyea regarding more information about the tuition increase but no response was received in time for publication.
Hazel Kelly, CSU strategic communications and public affairs manager,was able to offer some more information concerning the increase specifically pertaining to students who have financial aid.
“The CSU has committed to increasing student financial aid by $49 million dollars in the 2024-25 academic year alone to ensure that state university grant recipients will not pay the $342
per year increase in tuition,” Kelly said. “That commitment of allocating one-third of the tuition increase revenue will continue each year’s increase.”
Over 80 percent of students in the CSU system receive financial aid, according to a web page from the CSU.
When it comes to what the extra tuition money is going to be used for in terms of education purposes, Nosek couldn’t pinpoint the priorities but explained what standard tuition money funds.
“(The funds are) used for instruction primarily—it’s used for financial aid, salaries, faculty and staff, facilities, maintenance of facilities, new capital programs on campus, new buildings that we have or others,” Nosek said.
Nosek also said that there are other forms of revenue that get collected by the CSU system other than tuition fees from state schools.
“It’s not just coming from the state most of the time,” Nosek said. “Now, it’s bond measures that are voted on and then the campus has to pay it back through a debt service like a mortgage.”
According to a CSU webpage, the types of funding include system-wide revenue bonds, general obligation bonds, and state public works board lease revenue bonds.
Andy Luu, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at SJSU, voiced some concerns that he has with the increase with a couple of them being student loan debts and program cutting.
According to an article from the LA Times, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $375 million budget cut for the 2025-26 academic year which wouldn’t allow new funds for student support, employee pay, infrastructure and more.
“With the interest rates and everything, people spend forever paying that off,” Luu said. “Or either cutting off programs that are really important. Like always, the first to go is humanities and sports and stuff like that which are already not very present in our education.”
CSU Chancellor, Mildred García released a statement in response to Newsom’s proposal which can be found in a CSU webpage.
“Despite these challenges, we remain committed to serving our CSU community, but our ability to do so today is more limited than in the past,” García said. “If state revenues continue to increase as the governor has indicated, we look forward to relief from the budget cut and to having ongoing compact funding restored.”
René Beltran Hernandez, fourth year computer engineering student at SJSU, also gave his two cents about the increase and what concerns him about it.
“They’re increasing more and more every year and really the students have no say,” Hernandez said. “The people who actually are affected by the tuition really have no choice because they’re at the university and have to keep studying for whatever they have to do in life.”
