The cry to end the seemingly never ending  increases in tuition has shifted, as schools in the California State University system have found a new way to take students’ money, in the form of so called student success fees.

A student success fee is a fee that offers the promise of more classes, programs and improved graduation rates for thousands of CSU students, according to an article from the LA Times.

These success fees will cost students between $200 to $500, to give them access to basic things that used to come with being a student such as counseling and other academic resources.

While the stated intent is to help students succeed, the fees are actually a slick way to get around tuition freezes that were instituted by the governor and other lawmakers.

The same tuition freeze was coupled with increases in state aid to the CSU and the other school systems.

The schools are getting more money, but seemingly it’s not enough. Tuition is frozen, so they are trying to slide around that by making students foot even more of the bill for college.

Tuition annually at CSU’s campuses comes out to about $5,472, and was set by the Board of Trustees and has not risen in three years, according to the LA Times.

From 2003 to 2010 alone, the cost of tuition at four-year universities grew by nearly 80 percent, according to data from the Labor Department.

Tuition has grown more than 80 percent and the amount of student debt is gone past the $1 trillion mark, and the schools don’t have enough money to pay for the necessities?

Proponents say that the additional state funding isn’t enough to make up for all the cuts that were taken over the years and they need student help to pay for and provide classes and services.

Campuses in the East Bay, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, Pomona, San Bernardino, San Jose, San Luis Obispo and San Marcos already began charging the fee in 2011 with Fullerton, Dominguez Hills, Fresno and San Diego all considering instituting the fees.

Never when these fees or increases of tuition come around do you hear of the highly-paid administrators taking cuts or making sacrifices for the campuses they claim to love or be in favor of.

Not to say that they are monsters or anything of that like, but why must the lowest people on the totem pole, meaning students, be the ones that must constantly sacrifice?

Public higher education is quickly becoming a choice between two evils.

Either you choose to not go through school and work your way up through jobs that won’t pay as well, or you go through school to get a degree and will likely be paying off college debt from now until retirement.

What a choice students are provided.

Slapping the word success or any similar word onto a proposal that does nothing but screw over the student body doesn’t turn a sugar pill placebo into anything other than a useless pill that leaves the patient in pain.