Green and gold and red

There’s red ink at CSU Sacramento. The school has a deficit of about $7.5 million in its $240 million operating budget, and Sac State President Alexander Gonzalez has a budget plan.

Student enrollment must rise for the deficit to fall.

But total enrollment has been flat since Gonzalez arrived in 2003. Last month, the Legislature adopted, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, an ‘07-08 state budget that hikes fees 10 percent for some 400,000 CSU students. Students now pay 94 percent more than students did in 2002, according to the California Faculty Association. And Gonzalez’s own budget task force last spring reported that CSUS had not met its enrollment targets the past three years.

“Fee increases make it more challenging to meet enrollment requirements,” said Christina Romero, the CSUS Associated Students president. “We need a fee freeze or rollback to make higher education more affordable.”