Observers all over the map declared the CSU Board of Trustees out of touch and insensitive to the trials faced by the very Californians who rely on the university they oversee when at the same July 12 meeting the board hiked student tuition for the second time in less than a year and awarded a top executive, the new president of San Diego State, a salary $100,000 higher than his predecessor's.

The combined increases adopted by the Trustees mean students will pay 29 percent more this Fall than in Fall 2010. Altogether, the Trustees have raised undergrad student fees 283 percent since 2002.

Learn more from an Inside Higher Ed analysis republished by USA Today.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Education premiered a database on its web-site comparing college costs of all kinds. Of 32 public, four-year schools in the United States with the steepest tuition increases from 2007 to 2010, 22 are CSUs. View the database.

See a graph showing the history of undergraduate student fee hikes.