A freeze on undergraduate tuition at the 10 University of California campuses has been proposed by the new president, in an effort to improve the ways that students pay for school.
According to Reuters, former U.S. homeland security chief Janet Napolitano submitted the bid on Wednesday, six weeks after she'd assumed her role as president of the University of California system. In the proposal, Napolitano suggested that administrators would be given a period of time to come up with a tuition structure that wouldn't be so difficult for some California residents to shoulder.
Over the past two years, students of the University of California campuses have seen a rise in tuition while families and politicians alike scrambled to pay for the various classes, instructors, amenities and facilities needed to run the schools.
"Tuition goes right to the heart of accessibility and affordability - two of the university's guiding stars," Napolitano said during a speech given to university regents in San Francisco.
But cuts totaling in almost $1 billion over the past five years have led to serious increases in tuition, in addition to shortages in class. Relations between faculty and staff were also reportedly strained as a result of furloughs and hiring freezes, Reuters reported.
Upon assuming her role as President of the University, Napolitano announced that she intended to reconnect faculty and students' relations. Her first move involved creating new ways to help graduate students and undocumented immigrants afford college.
"We need to figure out, in the real world in which we live, how to bring clarity to, and reduce volatility in, the tuition-setting process. It's time for the university to collaboratively come up with another way," she said to the regents during the meeting in Northern California.
One of Napolitano's suggestions for the new program involved "cohort tuition," which keeps fees for a student's four years at a UC constant, in spite of potential cuts on the budget during their time in school.
