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With University of California Regents preparing to vote on proposed increases in professional degree fees at this week’s meeting, four UC professional degree students have filed a class action lawsuit in San Francisco against the regents to prevent those increases. 

The regents meeting will be held July 20-21 on the campus of UCSF-Laurel Heights, 3333 California St. in San Francisco. 

UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law student Freeda Yllana of San Jose and UC Berkeley joint Ph.D and J.D. candidate Ross Astoria of Berkeley—along with an UCLA Law School student and an UCSF School of Medicine student—are asking that the California Superior Court issue an injunction preventing the university from “collecting professional degree fees [from professional degree students] in amounts greater than those at which they first enrolled in their respective programs.” 

The university has not yet answered the complaint, which was only filed last week. University representatives could not be reached for comment. 

In their complaint, the four students say that they and all other professional degree students were promised by the university when they enrolled that their professional degree fee would not be raised during their enrollment in the university’s program. The four students each enrolled in 2003. 

In November 2004, however, university regents voted for professional degree fee increases that included existing students. The complaint estimates that fee increase at between $2,690 and $6,570 above the previous year’s amount. The complaint claims the increase was a breach of contract. 

The students are being represented by the Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin & Demain law firm of San Francisco and Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP of Baltimore. 

At its 10:30 a.m. Thursday session on July 21 trustees will consider a proposal to increase fees for selected Professional School Students by 7 percent over and above the 3 percent increase approved in November of 2004, bringing the total proposed increase this year to 10 percent. 

In addition, trustees will consider a temporary increase—$700 in 2005-06 and $1,050 in 06-07—to offset costs of another lawsuit injunction. If passed, that “temporary” increase will be reevaluated by the spring of 2007. 

For Boalt Hall students, if both increases pass, that would mean that regular fees would take a one-year jump from $33,776 to $36,231 next year, and to $36,581 the year after. Similar increases would also occur in UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the School of Medicine, with increases also being considered in graduate schools of optometry, public health, and public policy. 

In other items of interest at this week’s meeting, UC regents will: 

• Hear and update from the Eligibility and Admissions Study group on undergraduate eligibility admissions issues facing UC in the coming years (10:30 a.m. on July 20 in the Committee on Educational Policy); 

• Hear a report on the status of competition at Department of Energy laboratories as well as consider modifications to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory contract with the department (9:20 a.m. on July 21 in the Committe on Oversight of the Department of Energy Laboratories); 

• Discuss the impacts of the 2005-06 California budget agreement on university finances, as well as begin a preliminary discussion on the university’s 2006-07 budget (9:30 a.m. on July 21 in the Committee on Finance).›