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photo credit: Greta MartMandatory student fees across California State University rose tens and sometimes hundreds of dollars over the past decade, an EdSource analysis found, as university leaders raised funds for everything from new construction and athletics to a food pantry and student financial aid.
Cal State's average fees increased more than 17% over the decade in real terms. The average Cal State student was charged roughly $1,860 in the 2016-17 school year after converting to 2025 dollars. That figure rose to about $2,190 by 2025-26.
But fees vary widely across Cal State, with some campus leaders approving hundreds of dollars in new or increased fees in recent years, while others saw more gradual increases effectively neutralized by declining buying power.
Fresno State had one of the steepest fee hikes. Adjusting for inflation, fees surged 56%, rising from the system's lowest fee of $1,131 in 2016-17 to a more middling $1,774 in 2025-26. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which charges the highest campus fees across Cal State, total mandatory fees climbed from roughly $4,846 to $7,000 in inflation-adjusted terms. (Tiny Cal Maritime, which merged with Cal Poly last year, saw inflation-adjusted fees rise 93%, outpacing the main Cal Poly campus.) At nine campuses, fees were up more than $500 in the past 10 years after adjusting for changing spending power.
Inflation takes much of the sticker shock out of the rising fees, which have soared even higher on paper. A Fresno State student would have seen mandatory fees totaling $841 on their bill in the 2016-17 school year -- less than half the fees charged today in nominal terms.
Some of the biggest fee hikes of the past decade took effect only recently, between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years. That includes significant nominal increases at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (+$923), Sacramento State (+$630), Cal State Long Beach (+$598) and Fresno State (+$517).
With annual state budget appropriations uncertain, some campus leaders have dialed up fees, a revenue source they can more directly control. Altogether, Cal State raised $918 million from mandatory fees in 2024-25. The charges, which are in addition to tuition, generate reliable revenue at a time when the nation's largest four-year public university system is struggling with a growing structural shortfall that now totals $2.3 billion.
But rising fees have prompted outcry from some students, particularly when the Cal State system is increasing tuition while cutting course sections and degrees because money is so tight. Some students question how campuses plan to spend the new revenue or feel campus leaders aren't transparent enough about the need for proposed fees. At Fresno State, student government president Camalah Saleh said the decision last spring to increase the university's instructionally related activities fee was "very controversial" with students because more than 40% of the increase is expected to fund athletics.
"Whether or not we need it, no student wants to pay more money to begin with," said Saleh, a fourth-year student double-majoring in political science and communication.
Students are not the first to be concerned with Cal State fees. A 2020 state audit report found that some CSU campuses raised fees without adequately consulting students or explaining why larger fees were needed. Auditors pressed lawmakers to require a binding student vote before fee hikes. Cal State campuses can avoid a student referendum by using an alternative consultation process that typically involves open forums and student surveys.
Cal State officials, however, say that even with the added costs, CSU remains affordable to students and compares favorably to public universities in other states. The university system reports that about 79% of its students received need-based aid in the 2023-24 school year and 65% of undergraduates graduated debt-free. Plus, student fees help enable popular add-ons, such as new student unions, transportation or health services.
Fees can also be an enrollment strategy, a way of charging higher-income students more and lower-income students less. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, increased fees fund financial aid that the historically more affluent campus has used to attract students who better reflect California's diversity, President Jeffrey D. Armstrong said in an interview. In the 2024-25 budget year, for example, more than $14 million from the school's campus-based fee funded financial aid.
"These things have been absolutely transformational for the students who now come to Cal Poly that are below the median household income," Armstrong said.
Fresno State: A 'controversial' fee for athletics and much else
Fresno State President Saul Jimenez-Sandoval approved a $495 fee increase last spring. The single-largest chunk -- $5 million -- will go to intercollegiate athletics. The fees will also finance the school's free food pantry, the student newspaper, career services and tutoring.
"If we don't have the fee increase, we don't have the component of athletics," Fresno State President Jimenez-Sandoval told The Collegian, the university's student-run newspaper, last March. "If that were the case, then we would have to talk about the existential question, and I mean that in every term, of whether or not Fresno State should have Division I athletics."
Saleh, the student government president, said Fresno State should work toward making athletics financially self-sustaining, perhaps with the help of outside donors rather than student fees. Fees, she said, should prioritize academic needs such as course availability. "Without academics, there is no university," she said.
About 60% of Fresno State students receive enough financial aid to cover the recent fee increase, Sierra Estrada, Fresno State's interim director of financial aid and scholarships, said in a written statement.
Other Fresno State students, even those concerned about rising costs, said there's no shortage of areas where they would like to see the university invest more: Facility renovations, faculty hires, more funding for student clubs. Leslie Mora, a sophomore criminology major who works at the campus food pantry, said she's happy to pay higher fees knowing they help to feed food-insecure peers. "Now that we have that extra money, we can provide a lot more and order a lot more for the students," she said.
Cal Poly: New fees fund aid, but students worry about affordability
Cal Poly has long justified its higher fees as helping to pay for cutting-edge equipment, upgraded facilities, faculty pay and more courses. More recently, offsetting costs for low-income students in California has been a priority. Cal Poly in 2019 launched a new fee on out-of-state students and, following an alternative consultation process, increased its college-based fee in 2022, citing a need for more financial aid as a core rationale in both cases.
But that message isn't always reaching Cal Poly students. Several interviewed for this story, though generally supportive of spending student fees on line items, including financial aid and faculty pay, said they knew little or nothing about how the university uses money from fees.
Students' lack of knowledge about fees is one reason Armstrong, the university's president, favors alternative consultation, such as seeking feedback from student groups and elected student leaders. While students have voted on fees in the past, Armstrong said, "you're also asking 18 to 21 to 22 year-olds to make pretty heady decisions that last well beyond them. ... I simply think a student vote on something that significant, that is that long term, is not the best way to do it for some of the fees."
Plus, he added, a referendum on recent fee changes wouldn't make sense at Cal Poly, where the goal is to use the additional revenue to alter the socioeconomic composition of the student body.
"Why would I want to have a referendum of the students, who are a population that's more affluent than most public universities in California, in order to make changes to really better represent the full state of California?" Armstrong said.
Still, one Cal Poly student worried that higher fees could make the college less affordable for current students, especially those who don't receive aid. Jade Alberti, a second-year construction management major, said some friends have left Cal Poly because they can't afford it. "College is expensive enough," she said.
Methodology: To calculate how mandatory campus fees have changed across Cal State in the past decade, EdSource compiled fee data published on the university system's website. Weighted averages of fees across Cal State in the 2016-17 and 2025-26 school years were calculated using campus-level headcount enrollment for students receiving state support. To adjust for inflation, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers was used to convert fees from the 2016-17 school year into August 2025 dollars.
EdSource Data Journalist Daniel J. Willis, and Natalia Mochernak, Ethan Beck and Mariam Farag of EdSource's California Student Journalism Corps contributed to this story.
