At her first University of California Board of Regents meeting as UC president, Janet Napolitano this morning proposed a tuition freeze and announced several new initiatives, including one aimed at making the 10-campus system a model of energy efficiency.
Kicking off the second day of this week’s UC Regents meeting at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, the former Homeland Security secretary highlighted the need to make the university more affordable.
She said the university should pursue a new tuition policy to keep students’ costs down and make a UC education more accessible to a wider range of students.
Napolitano proposed a tuition freeze during the 2014-15 academic year in order to keep student costs low while the university works to create the new policy.
“I want tuition to be as low as possible and I want it to be as predictable as possible,” she said.
Napolitano said the new policy would hinge on state support and grant funding, and that cost-cutting measures would have to be enacted.
Additionally, she said, UC need to focus on expanding its campuses in order to accommodate more community college transfer students.
Napolitano said she also wants to see UC pursue initiatives that would apply university research to address global problems, and called for the UC system to become a “zero-net” consumer by 2025.
“We will have created as much energy as we use, and the energy we use will be clean energy,” she said.
Napolitano had previously announced the allocation of $15 million to go toward services for undocumented students, graduate student recruitment and post-doctoral fellowships.
Laura Dixon, Bay City News
