UCSC student and Commission on the Future member Victor Sanchez talks to City on a Hill Press about the Commission’s recent proposals.

Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education meets in Sacramento to hear testimonies of invested residents.

The UC Board of Regents, the 26-member governing body of the UC system, met yesterday to discuss issues of the newly proposed budget. The regents, who meet six times each year at different campuses, specifically addressed the state’s possible increase in higher education funding. Student presence was markedly low compared to the last regents’ meeting, but UCSC’s Student Union Assembly external vice chair has high hopes for attendance at a March 1 rally in Sacramento.

What will the UC system look like ten years from now? What will its size be? How can the University of California ensure that it is within reach of Californians of all backgrounds? And how will it continue to attract world-renowned faculty? Amid UC’s economic turmoil Board of Regents Chairman Russell Gould created the Commission on the Future to answer these questions.

The University of California’s Office of the President has shelved a potential plan to raise fees for undergraduates of certain majors. The plan, presented Sept. 15 to the UC Regents, intended to charge business and engineering majors an additional $900 starting at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year.