(Source: ABC10 news – 2017) (Second source: The Bottom Line 2017)
1857: Minns’ Evening School, a training school for elementary teachers, was established in San Francisco, Years later, in 1862, the school became the California State Normal School, then San Jose Normal School in 1871 when the campus was moved. (ABC)
1868: The Organic Act creates the University of California a a “complete university,” merging the then-private College of California in Oakland and a new state land-grant institution. Section 14 of the Act read: “as soon as the income of the University shall permit, admission and tuition shall be free to all residents of the State.” (ABC)
1921: California colleges began to charge “incidental fees” of $25 per year to cover non-instruction services. Non-California residents are charged $75 per year for tuition, but residents are still tuition free. (ABC)
1949: On Dec. 18, both the UC Regents and the State Board of Education unanimously vote to “reaffirm the long established principle that state colleges and the University of California shall be tuition free to all residents of the state.” They also resole to create greater student aid, “particularly as fees and nonresident tuition increase.” in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education (TBL)
1960: The Master Plan for Higher Education in California maintains that tuition at University of California and state colleges should be free, but that fees are necessary to cover non-instructional costs. “The two governing boards reaffirm the long established principle that state colleges and the University of California shall be free to all residents of the state.” (ABC)
1966: Ronald Reagan assumed office of Governor of California and changed the Cours of the state’s higher education system. In his eight years, he cut state funding for college universities and laid the foundation for a tuition-based system. (ABC)
According to a New York Times article from 1982, during his eight years as governor, “Reagan fought hard in the legislature to impose tuition at four-year colleges. He lost the battle to lobbyists for the university, … However, the Legislature agreed to increase student registration fees.” (ABC)
1968: Calif. Gov. Ronald Reagan fights to impose tuition at California four year colleges. The state legislature thwarts his efforts, but agrees to increase student registration fees. (TBL)
1977: Mandatory registration charges for both resident and nonresident undergraduate students stand at $647, while campus based fees stand at $49, according to data published by the UC Office of the President. With inflation, the mandatory changes would have the same buying power as $2,641.04 today, according to the Bureau of Statistics (TLB)
1980: Tuition is now imposed upon nonresident undergraduate students at $300 for the academic school year. Students also pay a student services fee at the amount of $419. (TBL)
1985: Annual tuition at UC schools reach nearly $5,200 for non-residential students and $1,326 for California residents. California state colleges near $500 in tuition, and community colleges begin to charge tuition for the first time – $5 per unit. (ABC)
1988: Tuition for the academic school year rises to $840 for both resident and nonresident graduate students, with a $594 student services fee. (TBL)
1995: Annual tuition at UC schools reach $4,139 in tuition for residents and $11,838 for non-residents. Fees and tuition at state colleges increase to $1,892 and community colleges cost $13 per unit. (ABC)
2002: Resident tuition stands at $3,121, which is still 26 percent lower than the average cost of in-state tuition among the top 300 ranked national universities by U.S. News & Report that year. (TBL)
2004: After years of budget cuts to the state’s higher education program, then-Governor Schwarzenegger, then-UC President Robert Dynes and then-CSU Chancellor Charles Reed agreed to “compact” that would would develop ways to bring in money. Among the changes were more tuition increases. (ABC)
2005: Annual tuition at UC Schools reaches $6,802 for residents and $24,622 for non-residents. California state colleges cost $3,163 per year and community colleges hit $26 per unit. (ABC)
2007: Resident tuition zips up to $5,790, while nonresident tuition stands at $6,342, student services fee amount to $786. (TBL)
2008: The financial crisis of 2007-2008, the worst recession since the Great Depression, hits the United States. The State General Fund for higher education drops from $12.8 million to $9.4 million, more than 26 percent, over the next five years. (TBL)
2009: California’s large deficit along with continued budget cuts to higher education lead to the UC Regents voting for a 32 percent increase in undergraduate tuition. The vote led to large-scale protests on various campuses, including at UC Davis, where 50 students were arrested following a protest in the lobby of Mark Hall, the building that houses the Chancellor’s office. (ABC)
The increase was leveled in two stages: A mid-year increase in the 2009-2010 school year, which totaled $1,170 for the rest of the academic school year. The following school year, students saw another 15 percent increase that brought the total tuition over $10,000 for the first time for resident undergrads. (ABC)
The CSU also had a tuition increase, though not as steep. Students saw a 10 percent increase in tuition each year from 2007 to 20100 and a 9.6 percent increase in 2012. In those five years, tuition jumped from $3,044 to $5,472 in full-time tuition. (ABC)
Like the CSU and the UC systems, California Community Colleges also increased costs to $46 per unit. (ABC)
2011: With tuition at $11,160, — a number that is 16.3 percent higher than the previous school year, and 411 percent higher than a decade before — students pay the cost of their own education than the state funds for itself for the first time in the history of UC (TBL)
2012: Resident tuition stays still at $11,160, though it’s now nearly 20 percent higher than the average cost of in state tuition within US. News’ top 300 ranked universities of the year. (TBL)
2014: (November) Tuition remains the same from 2011, though it has more than doubled in the ten years before. On Nov. 20, UC Board of Regents authorizes a plan to increase tuition by 5 percent over the next five years. (TBL)
UC President Janet Napolitano argues that a tuition freeze is no longer sustainable if the UC is to meet its financial obligation to its employees and increase the number of California undergraduates at UC campuses, the LA Times reports. (TBL)
But Gov. Jerry Brown states his opposition to tuition hikes and threatens not to release additional state funds to the UC unless the hikes are canceled, according to SFGate. He also places a new-two-year-freeze in may of 2015. (TBL)
2015: (November) Hundreds of UCSB students join the Million Student March, a protest against rising tuition costs and student fees, in a time of rampaging student debt among college students. Over 100 campuses countrywide, and all nine UC campuses, participate in the march, which originates from presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ call for “a million young people” to “march on Washington” (TBL)
2016: (April) In a second installment of the Million Student March, a crowd of 300 UCSB community members demands free tuition, greater financial aid, and a $15 minimum wage on campuses. (TBL)
2016: (November) With the two-year freeze nearing its end, in Fall 2017, UCBS student activists stage a walk-out of classes. (TBL)
2016: (February) “Making public colleges and universities tuition-free, that exists in countries all over the world, used to exist in the United States” – Bernie Sanders (PolitiFact)
Was college once free in United States, as Bernie Sanders says?
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are battling for the “most progressive” label in the Democratic presidential primary, and for Sanders that includes his call for free tuition at public colleges and universities.
During the Feb. 4 debate in New Hampshire, Sanders argues that there is a precedent for free tuition in the United States and overseas.
“Now, all of the ideas that I’m talking about, they are not radical ideas,” Sanders said. “Making public colleges and universities tuition-free, that exists in countries all over the world, used to exist in the United States.”
How common is free college tuition worldwide and did it used to exist in the United States?
A spokesman for Sanders referred us to a 2014 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that compares data on a variety of topics in advanced industrial nations.
We obtained the 2015 report from OECD that showed the number of countries with no tuition as of 2013-14: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden and Turkey.
Germany also now has free tuition at public universities, although students pay some fees.
“Yes, it’s free — it’s the German taxpayer paying for it,” said Peter Kerrigan, deputy director of German Academic Exchange Service. “Somebody is footing the bill. It’s just not the student.”
For the Nordic countries that charge no tuition, individuals face high income tax rates.
The approach to funding higher education “reflects these countries’ deeply rooted social values, such as equality of opportunity and social equity,” states an OECD report.
College tuition in the U.S.
College tuition has never been set on a nationwide basis, said John R. Thelin, professor at the University of Kentucky and author of A History of American Higher Education. Instead, it has been set by each state or college and is subject to approval by the legislature or board of trustees.
However, there are examples of some colleges or universities offering free tuition decades ago, especially universities were often free at their founding in the United States, but over time, public support was reduced or not increased sufficiently to compensate for their growth in students and costs (faculty and staff salaries, utilities etc.), they moved first to a low tuition and eventually higher tuition policy,” said Cornell University professor Ronald Gordon Ehrenberg.
For example, California offers free tuition to in-state students until the 1970s, although it charged an “incidental fee” starting in 1921.
Baruch College in New York was founded in 1847 as the Free Academy, the first free public institution of higher education in the nation, according to the college, which is now part of the City University system of New York. At least some students were paying by the early 20th century, and 1976 marked the end of any tuition-free policy.
At the University of Florida, a school catalog from 1905-06 stated: “No tuition is charged to students whose home is in Florida. All other students will be require to pay a tuition fee of twenty ($20) dollars per year.”
Public higher education was often free when a very small percentage of students attended, said Roger L. Geiger, education professor at Penn State and author of The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II.
“Historically, many individual institutions refrained from student charges, including early Stanford. Community colleges were often free, being considered an extension of secondary schools,” he said.
In Sanders’ home state at the University of Vermont, a book about the school’s history indicates that tuition was charged in the 19th century. Senior class tuition was $8.34 in 1827.
“I don’t think there was ever a time that UVM did not charge tuition,” said Jeffrey D. Marshall, director of research collections.
Sanders talked about public colleges, but we heard about at least one private university that offered free tuition for decades: Rice Institute, later which became Rice University. That university in Texas charged tuition for the first time in 1965. There are also a few small private colleges or universities that are tuition free today, such as Berea College.
Our Ruling
Sanders said, “Making public colleges and universities tuition free, that exist in countries all over the world, used to exist in the United States.”
There are at least nine advanced countries that offer free college, including the recent addition of Germany.
There was a time in the United States when some public colleges and universities charged no tuition. However, tuition has never been set as a national policy — it is a decision for each school or state government officials. And some colleges charged tuition dating back to the 1800s.
Sanders’ statement is accurate but needs clarification. We rate this statement Mostly True.
2016: (April) Last March, the Federal Reserve reported student debt across the U.S at about 1.2 trillion. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of new alumni have debt, at an average of $35,000 per graduate. Such problems are hot issues in the current presidential race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders proposing perhaps the most sweeping solution: free tuition at all U.S. public colleges. (TIME)
For some today, that plan might seem radical, but free tuition isn’t unheard of. Some schools offer tradeoffs like work programs, for example, and military academies are free in exchange for service in the Armed Forces. Grants and scholarships sometimes knock the price down to $0, too.
Yet, the idea of major state universities running tuition-free programs regardless of student or stipulation isn’t a completely foreign one. Though the exact quantity of U.S. public colleges that once offered is unclear, history is dotted with anecdotes.
The University of Florida, for example, was free for in-state students for many decades. Though the exact timeline is hard to track because of differing language in the school catalogs – like a “registration and instructional fee” that emerged in 1959 – the word “tuition” for Florida residents didn’t pop up until 1969, University Archivist Peggy McBridge says.
While it went through transitions in terms of fee costs and academic-merit based full rides, the City University of New York waived tuition up until 1976. Even within the last few decades, the state-lottery-funded HOPE scholarship has made in-state public colleges free for some Georgia students. Several other states also offer college and other education assistance through their lottery programs.
It is California, however, that has become likely the most cited example in the free tuition debate. Its University of California system was created in 1868 with the decree that “admission and tuition shall be free to all residents of the state,” and the California State and community-college systems followed suit.
2017: (January) A group named Reclaim Higher Education launches a website advocating the $48 Fix, a proposed 12 percent income tax surcharge that would cost the median family only $48 to return to the Master Plan and eliminate tuition entirely in California public higher education. (TBL)
Two days later, the UC Board of Regents approve a 2.5 percent tuition increase. Now, California residents face $14,409 in tuition and student fees for in-state residents, and nonresidents face tuition and student fees of $42,423 for the 2017-2018 school year. (TBL)
2017: After a six-year freeze, the UC regents approved a 2.5 percent increase, putting costs for undergrads at $11,502 for the 2017-2018 academic year. Likewise, the CSU will increase its tuition by about $270 per year. (ABC)
2017: College Was Once Free And For the Public Good — What Happened? (Yes!)
The promise of free college education helped propel Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination to national prominence. It reverberated during the confirmation hearings for Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Education, and Sanders continues to push the issue.
In conversations, among politicians, college administrators, educators, parents and students, college affordability seems to be seen as a purely financial issue — it’s all about the money.
My research into the historical cost of college shows that the roots of the current student debt crisis are neither economic nor financial in origin, but predominantly social. Tuition fees and student loans became an essential part of the equation only as Americans came to believe in an entirely different purpose for higher education.
Cost Of A College Degree Today
For many students, graduation means debt. In 2012, more than 44 million Americans (14 percent of the population) were still paying off student loans. And the average graduate in 2016 left college with more than $37,000 in student loan debt.
Student loan debt has become the second-largest type of personal debt among Americans. Besides leading to depression and anxiety, student loan debt slows economic growth: It prevents young Americans from buying houses and cars and starting families. Economist Alvaro Mezza, among others, has shown a negative correlation between increasing student loan debt and homeownership.
The increase in student loan debt should come as no surprise given the increasing cost of college and the share that student are asked to shoulder. Decreasing state support for colleges over the last two decades caused colleges to raise tuition fees significantly. From 1995 to 2015, tuition and fees at 310 national universities ranked by U.S. News rose considerably, increasing by nearly 180 percent at private schools and more than 225 percent at public schools.
Whatever the reason, tuition has gone up. And students are paying that higher tuition with student loans. These loans can influence students’ decisions about which majors to pick and whether to pursue graduate studies.
Earlier Higher Education: A Public Good
During the 19th century, college education in the United States was offered largely for free. Colleges trained students from middle-class backgrounds as high school teachers, ministers and community leaders who, after graduation, were to serve public needs.
The free tuition model had to do with perceptions about the role of higher education: College education was considered a public good. Students who received such an education would put it to use in the betterment of society. Everyone benefited when people chose to go to college. And because it was considered a public good, society was willing to pay for it — either by offering college education free of charge or by providing tuition scholarships to individual students.
Stanford University, which was founded on the premise of offering college education free of charge to California residents, was an example of the former. Stanford charged no tuition for almost three decades from its opening in 1891 until 1920…
College Education Becomes A Private Pursuit
The perception of higher education changed dramatically around 1910. Private colleges began to attract more students from upper-class families — students who went to college for the social experience and not necessarily for learning.
The social and cultural change led to a fundamental shift in the purpose of a college education. What was once a public good designed to advance the welfare of society was becoming a private pursuit for self-aggrandizement. Young people entering college were no longer seen as doing so for the betterment of society, but rather as pursuing personal goals: in particular, enjoying the social setting of private colleges and obtain a respected professional position upon graduation…
November 2019: The soul-crushing cost of college in California explained (Cal Matters)
It’s not your grandparents’ — or even your parents’ — higher-ed system. A young California of the Baby Boomer generation, bolstered by the post-war economic boom and the state’s investment in public higher education, could often emerge from colleges with little to no debt and a clear path to a living wage and homeownership.
Today’s California students, by contrast, graduate with an average of more than $20,000 in student debt. California offers more generous financial aid than most other states, but gone are the days of taking free college for granted. Studies show many students struggle even to afford food and housing.
How did college costs get so high, and what are policymakers proposing we do about it?
Think free college is a recent idea? It’s right in the University of California’s 1868 charter “as soon as the income of the University shall permit, admission and tuition shall be free to all residents of the State.”
When California lawmakers created the 1960 Master Plan that would guide the future of the country’s most prestigious public higher education system, residents enrolled at UC were paying just $60 per semester in “incidental fees.”
But beginning in the late 1960’s, politicians pushed to increase the amount students contributed to their education. Their stated reasons were both ideological and financial: Ronald Reagan, who was governor prided himself on slashing government spending, said the state should not “subsidize intellectual curiosity.” Later, the dot-com burst in the early aughts prompted tuition increases under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Undergraduate fees at UC grew at nearly five times the rate of inflation between 1977 and 2018; at the height of the most recent recession, the university raised them by 32% in a signal year. California State University tuition has grown by about 900% in the last four decades, adjusted for inflation — and that doesn’t include additional fees imposed by individual campuses.
Higher ed spending tanked in the recession
Like other states, California went hunting for lien items to cut after the 2008 financial crisis. Higher education went on a diet: Building maintenance was postponed, faculty taught larger classes, and students paid more. The squeeze continued a decline in per-student spending that had been happening since shortly after the turn of the millennium.
Since the recession, California’s higher education budget has bounced back more than in other states. For example, the state is spending more per student on community colleges than it ever has.
But that doesn’t mean tuition prices have fallen. They’ve just started to level off — while the cost of living continues to rise…
2021: Keeping College Affordable for California Students (PPIC)
Key Takeaways
California has traditionally kept college affordable with a combination of low tuition — particularly at its community colleges — and generous financial aid. However, past recessions prompted cuts in state funding to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU), and tuition tripled between 1995-96 and 2011-12. Since then state funding has increased and tuition at public institutions has remained relatively stable. However, in an era of constrained resources, revenue volatility, and increasing economic inequality, a resilient, effective, and efficient financial aid system is increasingly important.
A combination of federal, state, and institutional aid protects lower-income students from tuition increases and ensures that most students at public higher education institutions pay no tuition. However, the cost of housing, fees, books, and transportation often greatly outstrips tuition. The state should consider expanding aid to cover these costs for students in most need — this could be particularly helpful at the community colleges, which serve large shares of lower-income Californians.
Only half of California’s high school seniors apply for federal financial aid for college, even though two-thirds enroll in a postsecondary institution. The state and its educational institutions should work together to make students aware of their financial aid options and make it easier for them to apply.
Many students take longer than four year to complete bachelor’s degrees. Reducing the time to degree at four-year colleges would allow students to avoid the costs associated with extra years of schooling, ensure that their financial aid does not run out, and enable them to enter the workforce sooner.
Transferring from community college to a four-year university can be a cost-effective way to earn an bachelor’s degree, but transfer pathways need to be streamlined to help more students get degrees more quickly.
Californians — especially those who enroll in public or nonprofit colleges — are less likely to carry student loan debt than their peers in other states, and they borrow less, on average, than students in the rest of the nation. But some graduates — and many who do not graduate — struggle to pay off their loans…
2024: The mystifying costs of college in California, explained (CalMatters)
University tuition is free! Now, wait, the full cost of college is tens of thousands of dollars annually. Hold up. There’s just enough financial aid to bring down the price tag to just a few thousand dollars a year — tuition, food, and housing included.
All of those statements are true, depending on where you attend and how much you or the parents who claim you on their taxes earn. For something as consequential — and at times more costly than a small condo — as affording a degree, understanding how much a family must shell out for a better shot at higher wages can be complicated.
This guide is meant to explain the basic truth about affording college: For almost everyone who attend’s, they don’t pay the published price.
Most Californians attending public universities — and the vast majority of students in the state attend public, not private, schools — don’t pay tuition because of state and university grants for lower-income students.
And so the story of affordability in California isn’t immediately intuitive: After recession-era cuts, the state has recently started to spend big on higher education. Tuition at the University of California and California State University used to be non-existent; now it’s a major source of university revenue. Housing is often a larger expense than tuition. But financial aid can turn a sticker price of $30,000 into $5,000, depending on the school and a student’s family income.