BERKELEY, Calif. – In 1960, California leaders pledged a tuition-free ride for state high school graduates with the smarts and gumption to pursue a degree at a public college or university.

Four decades later, it seems a distant promise.

This year, Nick Bolton, a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is working 30 hours a week selling washing machines to help foot a college bill of more than $6,000, a figure that has increased for four consecutive years and may well go up for a fifth year.

“It’s a burden,” said Bolton, 18. “They just keep increasing the price and cutting the funding.”

Recent fee increases at the 10-campus UC, the 23-campus California State University system and the state’s 109 community colleges spring from a multibillion-dollar state deficit. But they also are part of a longer trend that has seen the state swing away from its 45-year-old vision _ the Master Plan for Higher Education, which promised accessible and affordable college and has been lauded as a national model.

“We have built wonderful institutions and we’re trying to hang on by our fingernails here to maintain that commitment to the master plan,” said state Assemblywoman Carol Lui, D-La Canada-Flintridge and chairwoman of the Assembly’s Committee on Higher Education. “But we are struggling without resources.”

In 1960, when the master plan was new, it cost $84 in “incidental fees” to attend UC. Today, the state still doesn’t technically charge students tuition, but fees have mounted to the point where they are no longer incidental.

“We crossed that bridge a long time ago about whether it was going to be free or not,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose.

In a recent study, the center found that college is less affordable for most Americans than it was a decade ago.

Despite the hikes, California college administrators point out that the state’s schools still compare favorably with the rest of the nation.

At UC, fees have increased about 60 percent over the past decade. They rose from about $5,200 (including miscellaneous campus fees) in 2002-03, to the present total of about $6,700 for a student with a full-time class load. UC officials said that is about $1,100 less than projected averages for comparable prominent public institutions in other states.

Still, there is concern that California isn’t measuring up to its own standards.

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Three decades ago, state funds comprised 41 percent of the general operating budget of UC, the system that includes the world-famous campuses of Berkeley and UCLA and serves about 200,000 students. This year, the total was 19 percent, said Jerry Kissel, UC’s assistant vice chancellor of budget.

For Bolton, the numbers translated this way: He initially expected to have to come up with $19,000 to cover total costs of his freshman year. But as fees started to rise, he found he was going to need about $21,000.

Bolton, who has four siblings and whose single-parent father makes only about $40,000 a year, made up the difference by applying for eight or nine scholarships, winning two worth about $12,000.

The rest of the money he earns. He has seen others overwhelmed by debt and doesn’t want to graduate with a massive loan hanging over his head.

Meanwhile, he’s cramming as many courses in as he can, no easy task since his goal is a double major in business economics and communications.

“Because the price is so high, I can’t take classes slower. I have to finish in four years,” he said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

It costs less to go to CSU than UC, but fees at the larger system have followed the same upward trajectory, also rising about 60 percent over the past 10 years. As at UC, Cal State fees are increasing for 2005-06, to about $3,100, including miscellaneous campus fees.

Meanwhile, community college fees have risen from $11 a unit two years ago to $26.

Bolton’s sister, Lindsey, is on the receiving end of both the community college and CSU fee hikes. Currently a student at Santa Rosa Junior College, she is expecting to attend CSU next year.

Like her brother, Lindsey has some scholarships and a job, two in her case. But school sometimes seems like a nonstop financial drain, from the $90 she recently paid for a textbook to the cost of the parking pass that doesn’t guarantee parking.

“It comes straight out of your pocket,” she says. “It’s really frustrating. The only way to really get a good job is to have a good education. They make that so hard, it’s no wonder so many people give up or just drop out.”

The latest fee hikes are part of a six-year pact worked out between the CSU and UC systems and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ousted former Gray Davis in 2003 on a promise to bring order to state finances.

Critics say school officials should have fought for more funding.

Administrators say cuts had to be made in light of the state’s multibillion-dollar deficit. They note that financial aid has increased to help the poorest students and say the pact was a good deal because it provided predictability and the promise of increased state funding in future years.

“I think given the state’s fiscal crisis, that’s a pretty powerful statement, that’s a pretty powerful commitment from this governor,” said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance.

Under the pact, UC and CSU undergraduate fees could rise by as much as 10 percent for 2006-07. Officials will get a clearer idea of whether that’s likely to happen when the governor releases his proposed budget next month.

The state is projected to have a budget shortfall of $8.1 billion next year.

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Fading support for higher education began long before the Schwarzenegger administration.

One reason for the dwindling funds is Proposition 13, the 1978 voter-approved property tax revolt, said UC’s Kissel. Another reason is that just as college-age baby boomers fueled the burst of higher education spending in the 1960s, the now aging boomers are eating up health dollars.

The bottom line is that there is less state taxpayer support for higher education nationally and in California, Kissel said. Meanwhile, a second wave of teenagers, the boomers’ children, is rising. UC alone expects 60,000 more students between 1999 and 2010.

That makes the current budget crisis much more acute than previous cycles of good-time spending followed by belt-tightening, said Callan, of the San Jose policy center.

“We’ve never had this kind of perfect storm situation, where you’ve got more kids graduating (high school) as the budget gets tighter,” he said.

Forty years ago, the investment in higher education paid off, producing an educated work force that fueled the economic engines of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the biotechnology industry.

An educated work force is even more important in today’s knowledge-based economies, where work can easily be farmed out to other states and countries.

“Do we really think that we can compete against people who will take less money if our people have less education and less training?” Callan said. “This is a very high stakes game.”

For students, the stakes are personal.

“It’s horrible,” said Teresita Alvarez, a UC Berkeley student who feels conflicted about recruiting students from her low-income high school in Los Angeles, knowing the kind of costs they’ll face.

Alvarez, a senior, expects to graduate with $10,000 debt, despite winning several scholarships.

“If we keep looking at the short-term goals that we might achieve through these increases, we lose sight of the long-term goal, which is to have a population of Californians who are educated,” she said.