Another major development at next week’s Trustees meeting will be the announcement that Chancellor Charles Reed plans to break from the strategic vision outlined in California’s Master Plan for Higher Education and install “tuition” at the CSU for the first time.

Unlike state universities in every other state, California's public campuses in effect have banned official use of the word “tuition” and what it means — that students bear a hefty share, if not most, of their education costs.

But according to the agenda for the upcoming Trustees meetings, it is the chancellor’s intent to change the terminology used to refer to certain charges assessed to students.

To read the agenda item at the Cal State U Trustees meeting next week go to http://www.calstate.edu/bot/agendas/ and click on "Committee on Finance."

CFA leaders strongly oppose the proposal because the words indicate a change in vision for the CSU.

“We know that words matter,” said CFA Associate Vice President Andy Merrifield, a professor of Political Science at Sonoma State. “Therefore we must assume that replacing the words ‘student fees’ with the word ‘tuition’ demonstrates that the CSU's top executives have decided explicitly to alter their view of how the CSU should be funded and of the role of students in paying for public higher education.

He continued, "How ironic that our state university executives would close the book on the Master Plan just when the state elected Jerry Brown, whose father’s greatest legacy is his vision for public higher education."

Noting that the chancellor persistently argues the CSU charges students less than many other state universities, Merrifield continued, “It is bad policy to reduce California based on what happens in other states. What makes higher education in California unique compared to other universities around the nation is that WE have a vision and a plan—the Master Plan. If we abandon that, California loses something that made it great.”