I'm a graduate student in the Masters of City Planning program, and our department is looking to levy a professional degree fee (PDF) on incoming students in the amount of $6,000/student/year. Unlike the business and law schools, which are justified as falling on higher incomes upon graduation, this PDF has been created to cover budget short-falls. Are the Regents leveraging the potential for higher cuts to induce departments to fundraise, and in this case, at the expense of the students and WITHOUT student input? This is tragic, and I wonder if there are similar movements going on in other departments/schools?Jessica
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Professional Degree Fees Jumping: Is this Happening at Your School?
We received a query from Jessica Luk, and would appreciate receiving more news about new professional degree fees. Similiar increases have been proposed for Berkeley's School of Social Welfare.
I'm a staff member at Berkeley and I see these professional fees increasing by leaps and bounds. What makes it worse is that present policy does not allow departments to cover these fees out of departmental Block Grants.
ReplyDeletewhat kind of policy would that be? of course block allocations allow covering fees. verifiable facts only please
ReplyDeleteYou can "verify" this "fact" by looking at the form used to process Departmental Block Grants. It says "may not be used to pay PDFs" (Professional Degree Fees). Now, you can get around it by giving the student a larger stipend, but that causes issues with financial aid.
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