Students are raped by fees while administrators live the high life

"I feel your pain."
While students are screwed with endless fees, the new San Diego State President Elliot Hirshman was approved for a $400,000 compensation package.  This is $100,000 more than his predecessor for doing the same job.

Hidden Taxes  -  Cal State students are forced to pay a fee just to graduate

• The "adults" in administration and the unions rape the system to line their own pockets while the students are saddled with a massive debt that they cannot even declare bankruptcy on.

In the olden days I worked my way through Cal State at a minimum wage job and graduated with zero college debt.  But those were the old days. 

Since then California education has gone to shit with insane fees for college students, over paid administrators and a high school system with a huge drop-out rate that graduates near illiterates. 

Now graduating students at more than a dozen California public universities will have to hand over money before they are handed their diplomas, a newspaper reported.

Across the state, 15 of Cal State's 23 campuses have graduation fees, the Oakland Tribune reported.

Cal State East Bay charges $45 to graduate. At San Francisco State, the fee is $100 - $60 more than it was two years ago.


"There is a fee for everything," said Natalia Aldana, a Cal State East Bay communications major and journalist who will graduate in June. "I think it's really unfortunate that they have to charge students for everything they do, including graduation."

The fees are not new, but students are noticing them at a time when they have experienced tuition fee hikes nearly every year they were on campus, the Tribune reported.

At San Jose State, some students recently learned they'd have to pay $75 to participate in their department's celebration.

"You've worked so hard," said Rebecca Krueger, who started a blog about the fees. "It's this time of honor and celebration, and you're hit with this fee just to participate. You feel nickel-and-dimed."

Cal State spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp said because tuition money can only be used for instruction costs, campuses must look elsewhere to pay for graduations. The state's Master Plan for Higher Education has created a complicated set of fees, the Tribune reported.

UC Berkeley graduates don't pay a separate fee to get their diplomas, but commencement tickets cost $10 a head - even for graduates themselves.

Some San Jose State officials say the university could help departments control their ceremony costs by coordinating their planning.

At one event last year, Dorothy Poole, the head of the commencement committee, said she watched rental companies set up chairs for one department's event, take them down and put them up again for a different department a day later.

While students go deep into debt, the administrators get huge salaries.


The average annual base salary for a CSU president is about $298,000. As for the perks, presidents receive a $1,000 monthly auto allowance and a free house provided by the campus, or a $50,000 to $60,000 annual housing stipend.

CSU Board of Trustees approved a $400,000 compensation package for newly named San Diego State President Elliot Hirshman, while in the same meeting trustees also approved a 12 percent tuition increase. Hirshman earns about $100,000 more than his predecessor.

Six presidents now receive annual supplements ranging from $29,000 to $50,000 reports the Los Angeles Daily News.

A nationwide survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education of 190 public research institutions found that the average compensation for a university president in 2011 was $421,395. The highest paid leader in 2011 was University of Ohio President E. Gordon Gee, who earned $1.9 million. In California, the top earner was University of California President Mark G. Yudoff, who earned $581,232.