This morning, the UC Board of Regents approved (yet) another tuition rate hike. This following right on the heels of the California State University committee’s decision to increase tuition by 12%.

What this all means is that if you’re a CA student and want to attend a state school (that is if you can even gain admittance into one), then you better be willing to pay.

According to an AP report for ABC 7, “Undergraduate and graduate tuition for California residents will rise to $12,192, which doesn’t include room, board and roughly $1,000 in campus fees. That’s $1,890, or 18 percent, more than what UC undergraduates paid this past academic year and more than three times what they paid a decade ago.”

And while the tuition for CA-residents is not nearly as much as for those from out-of-state who pay an additional $22,879, totaling close to a whopping $52,329, if one lives on-campus, that’s still a lot of cashola especially for the myriad of low-income students who worked hard to get into the universities in the first place.

One shining light seems to be that a third of the revenue from the tuition hike will be set aside for financial aid. ABC 7 reports that, “Needy students from families earning less than $80,000 have all of their tuition covered by financial aid, and the tuition increase will be waived for one year for many students from families earning up to $120,000.”

However, like always, it’s the students from middle-class families that will be getting totally screwed as they may not qualify for either the waiver or financial aid.

At this rate, for those of us with younger children or no kids at all as yet, we should be prepared to shell out upwards of $100,000 per year for college tuition. Ugh.

For more, go here.

Photo credit: University of California

• Tag: Berkeley, Cal, college, economy, Money, rate hikes, students, tuition, UC, UC Board of Regents, Univerity of California