LONG BEACH, Calif. – Students who attend the nation’s largestpublic university system will pay more for their education nextyear after California State University trustees approved a hike inundergraduate fees for the fourth consecutive year.

As part of a $4 billion budget proposal, the trustees voted 15-3on Thursday to approve a hike of 8 percent, or $186, inundergraduate fees for 2005. With the increase to $2,520 per year,fees will have risen by more than $1,000, or 76 percent, over thepast four years _ a sign of the state’s lingering financialproblems.

Under the budget, the fees for graduate students will increaseby 10 percent or $282.

The increase was expected under a compact between CSU officialsand Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reached last spring. The governoragreed to provide funding increases for the 23-campus system inexchange for the university requiring students to pay a greaterpercentage of the cost of their education, with the hikes limitedto no more than 10 percent a year.

“We’re in a tough situation. The state’s in a tough situationand essentially we’re doing the best we can,” said Bill Hauck, atrustee and president of the California Business Roundtable.

The three trustees who voted against the fee hike were Lt. Gov.Cruz Bustamante; Ricardo Icaza, leader of a grocery workers union;and Eric Guerra, a student at California State University,Sacramento. Students and faculty members had sought a moratorium onthe fee increases that have undermined what was once one of thenation’s great educational bargains.

Administrators say the cost of CSU is still a good deal comparedto similar schools, but students say the high cost of living inCalifornia means that many of their colleagues must work full-timeor drop out to raise money for their studies.

“We can barely afford to pay for tuition as it is,” said KarlaFlores, who is in her second year at Cal Poly Pomona and says shemust delay buying textbooks because of the rising cost of hereducation.

Fees were $1,428 at the CSU in 2001 and had even decreased inthe late 1990s as the state’s budget swelled during the high-techboom. But the bursting of the stock bubble resulted in cutstotaling $524 million over the last three years. CSU officialsaccepted higher fees in the agreement with Schwarzenegger as a wayto make the annual budgeting process more predictable.

But the California Faculty Association argues that CSU shoulddrive a harder bargain with Schwarzenegger and the Legislature andshould seek more than the $4 billion requested to operate thesystem.

“This budget proposal is minimal, not nearly enough to rebuildthe CSU after two years of gigantic cuts,” said John Travis, theCFA president and a professor of political science at HumboldtState University.