ATLANTA - The University System Board of Regents, which oversees the state's 35 public colleges and universities, unanimously approved a $100-per-semester hike in University of Georgia student fees Tuesday.
Students at other colleges face smaller fee hikes, including $50 per semester more at Gainesville State College.
The increase, effective with winter semester, comes on top of a $100-per-semester emergency fee the regents imposed last year.
Besides UGA, the $100 increase applies to students at the Medical College of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University.
Regents also cut the current year's budget another 3 percent because tax collections continue to drop.
A 3 percent cut slices about $12 million more from UGA's instructional budget.
Regent Kenneth R. Bernard of Douglasville predicted more cuts are on the way.
"My concern is I don't see the end to this," Bernard said. "There are going to be other hits."
The university system already has implemented several austerity measures, including six days of employee furloughs.
While hiking student fees, the regents imposed a one-year moratorium on increases to any fees imposed by individual schools, except those needed to pay back the costs of buildings and parking decks currently under construction.
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There is a way to circumvent these fee increases. I have found by personal experience that one does not need to sit in a classroom to learn. There are two online univerisities that have the lowest tuition rates of any school I have found. One school is Fort Hays State University in Fort Hays,Kansas, which offers Bachelors and masters degree programs, and Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama, which offers Bachelors,Master and Doctorate degrees in a wide variety of majors.Check them out, they are accredited schools, not diploma miils.All degrees are 100% online, as opposed to some schools that have residency requirements.