From the issue dated September 19, 2003
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Students Sue States Over Tuition Increases but Face an Uphill BattleBy JENNIFER JACOBSONLaw-school classes at the University of California at Berkeley started without This was to be Mr. Kashmiri's final semester, but now that he has amassed nearly $100,000 in student-loan debt, his credit is shot. His family cannot afford to help: His mother works as a ticket-taker in an airport parking lot, and his father, once the owner of a gas station, had to close it two years ago, when California's economy started to falter. The University of California system's tuition increases -- there were three this year -- have kept Mr. Kashmiri out of the classroom, but they have brought him into the courtroom, a place the aspiring public-interest lawyer did not expect to see until after graduation. Mr. Kashmiri is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that he and seven other students filed in July against the University of California's Board of Regents. They say that the board broke a promise that it would not raise tuition in the middle of the academic year, and that it did not give students enough warning of the price increase. The lawsuit seeks to stop the system from further raising tuition for professional-degree programs, and to refund the recent increase. A trial date has not been set. The students in California are not the only ones going to court to challenge tuition increases. A group at the University of Maryland filed a similar lawsuit in February, and four students at the University of Arizona sued its Board of Regents last month. Legal experts say the students will have trouble getting judges to give them their money back, since courts have traditionally granted colleges wide latitude to set their own rules and rates. Already, a state court in Baltimore has ruled against the Maryland students, who have appealed the decision. Going to court is more effective than traditional strategies against tuition increases, like picketing or holding sit-ins, the plaintiffs believe. "I have a family to support," says Bronson T. Yake, a second-year law student at University of Baltimore, who is a participant in the lawsuit. "I don't have the time to do a sit-in. Win, lose, or draw, the system had to at least spend money on their attorneys and deal with us. Writing a letter wouldn't do that. Sitting in would be annoying, and, in my mind, kind of childish." Broken Promises Blaming the state's budget crunch, the University of California regents decided in January to increase tuition for students in professional programs, like business, law, and medicine, by up to $400. The change came after most of those students had registered and paid the bill for the spring 2003 term. Then, in May, the board said it would increase fees for students attending the 2003 summer session -- by $160 for undergraduates and $182 for graduate students. At Berkeley, the announcement came five days before the session's first classes began. And in mid-July, the board approved another fee increase for professional degrees, ranging from $563 for nursing to $1,894 for law, to take effect in the fall. Mr. Kashmiri just didn't have the money. During a meeting of the University of California Students Association last academic year, Mr. Kashmiri, a member of the group's board, was reminded of a promise that Berkeley had made. Janet Lee, a fellow representative who is now a fourth-year medical student at the University of California at San Francisco, remembered reading in her school catalog that the system would not raise fees while they were enrolled. She had written to the system president's office inquiring about the increase, and told Mr. Kashmiri about the response: The system, she was informed, had the authority to change the policy at any time. "I was like, Wait, I've been to contract law," Mr. Kashmiri says. "If they say something, and it's a promise and we rely on it, that becomes a binding contract." He and Ms. Lee talked to a lawyer and persuaded five other law students, and an undergraduate to join the suit as named plaintiffs. The students also created a Web site, EducationIsARight.org, outlining their case. The student association, for its part, is backing a bill in the Legislature to establish a committee of parents, students, alumni, and administrators whose approval would be required for any increase in student fees. "The University of California made a specific promise to graduate students that it would not raise the professional-degree fee, depending on what year you started your professional program," says Andrew D. Freeman, a lawyer who represents the student plaintiffs in both California and Maryland. That promise, he says, appeared in the system's brochures, catalogs, and on the Web site of the office of the president. Last month, though, a Superior Court judge in San Francisco declined to issue a preliminary injunction, sought by the students' lawyers, to halt collection of the fee increase. The judge, says Mr. Freeman, "was just very reticent to deprive public universities of any tuition in light of the terrible budget cuts that universities have been suffering." The sluggish economy has indeed significantly affected the university's finances, says Hanan Eisenman, a spokesman for the system president, Richard C. Atkinson. The regents passed the fee increase for professional-school students "reluctantly," he says, adding that they provided as much advance notice as possible, given the uncertainty of the budget. And while the regents made every effort to keep tuition stable for professional-school students, he says, "the policy does say fees are subject to change without notice." In fact, the relevant passage in the 2003 catalog for Boalt Hall, Berkeley's law school, states: "All students who enter the J.D. Program pay tuition and fees. The professional degree fee is one component of the total fees. The professional degree fee remains at the same level for the three years in which the student is enrolled in the program. Other components of total fees, however, may change." Even so, Mr. Freeman says, the system should not have resorted to raising tuition in midyear. As hard as the economy has been on university budgets, he says, "universities at least do have some cash reserves. Students living on a shoestring budget have made their plans for a semester -- where to live, what summer jobs to take, whether to go out for pizza. For the university to suddenly say you need to come up ... with $1,800 more for fall tuition is very difficult for the budget that they're on." Spring Surprise In Maryland, five law students, one medical student, and one undergraduate from four campuses of the state university filed their class-action suit after the system's Board of Regents raised tuition with two weeks' notice, just as the spring semester classes were starting. In January, a letter from William E. Kirwan, the system's chancellor, was sent to students notifying them of a possible increase, even though many of them had already paid for the spring semester. The regents approved the changes later that month, raising fees for undergraduates by amounts ranging from $76 to $333, and for professional-school students by $289 to about $600. As in California, Maryland officials cited extensive budget cuts as the reason for the increase. System officials hoped that the $12.9-million to be generated by the midyear increase would help mitigate $67-million in cuts to this past year's budget, says John K. Anderson, head of the educational-affairs division in the state attorney general's office. Still, some campuses were forced to lay off staff members and forgo filling vacancies, he says. Mr. Yake, an evening student at University of Baltimore's law school, says budget cuts are no excuse: "When I get myself into a fix, I can't extort money from the people around me." Because university officials "couldn't control their spending, now they're taking it out on everyone else -- the students," he says. "Private universities wouldn't be able to do this. If they spent too much, they'd have to go in the hole for a while because they can't change tuition midstream." Mr. Freeman, the students' lawyer, who is in Baltimore, says there is precedent for plaintiffs' winning such a fight. In a 1992 case, Gamble v. University System of New Hampshire, students sued the system for raising tuition in midyear, and some of them won. In the Maryland case, however, the court's ruling in favor of the university system cited the state's sovereign immunity from lawsuits, he says. He expects the students' appeal to be heard this winter by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Students at the University of Arizona filed a lawsuit late last month against the university system's Board of Regents for raising tuition by $1,000, or about 39 percent. The students say the board's action violates the state Constitution's mandate that instruction in the public university system be "as nearly free as possible." Tough Road "You're going to see the need for schools to just be careful in what they say and in being transparent in what their policies are ... if they want to maintain flexibility to change tuition in financially hard times," says Arthur Sussman, who for 20 years was general counsel at the University of Chicago and who teaches a course on higher education and the law there. But he and other legal observers say the students have little chance of winning. The California case may be difficult to argue as a class-action lawsuit, he believes, because while some students in the system may have seen the university system's pledge, others may have not. The institutions being sued have nothing to fear, says Walter K. Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "Universities get off very, very easy and are well insulated from this type of litigation compared with other enterprises that deal with consumers," he says. "Universities get a great deal of deference from the courts. Their practices are not nearly as easy to challenge." Besides, he says, students should understand that tuition rates are not set in stone. "Especially if you are going to a state university, you should go in with the awareness that tuition is a political football that will depend on state budgets and state politics," he says. "This is, or should be, a pretty well-known aspect of going to a state university, in that state budgets and its politics are going to necessarily have an effect on a university and how it treats you." But in California, university officials have treated students poorly, says Mr. Kashmiri, who is looking for a job. "With all the budget cuts, they have gradually eliminated public higher education," he says. "At the UC system, we've essentially cut out the middle class." He chose Berkeley's law school in the first place, he explains, because of its prestige, and because he thought he could afford it. Now, he says, he regrets having turned down scholarships from other law schools. http://chronicle.com Section: Special Report Volume 50, Issue 4, Page A14
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education