Soaring college costs have some students turning out to protest.  The University of California system plans to raise tuition by almost 32 percent, which led to student protests across the state’s universities. The incident is shedding light on the financial struggles facing schools across the country.  Institutions for higher education are taking different approaches to handling budget cuts.

MSNBC spoke to University of California Student Association President Victor Sanchez, who says the tuition increases are driving out poorer students.

“We’re protesting the increased privatization of our public education. We’ve seen since 2001 our fees have risen over 160 percent. We have low-income families, those that come from communities of color as well, that are going to be pushed out of the University. And quite frankly, paying $10,300 in fees just to attend a public institution is just unacceptable for a lot of our students who can’t afford to keep going to school here at the University of California.”

CNBC looks at a private California university, Stanford.  It took a different approach from the UC system when it was faced with a shrinking endowment and a budget crisis.

“One thing was sacrosanct and that was financial aid for undergraduates. We just thought in this economic crisis, you can’t touch that it just doesn’t make any sense. But everything else got cut and we cut quickly to try to get back onto a reasonable spending curve.”

Richard Lambert of the Confederation of British Industry tells ITN News when government support lessens, universities are put in a tough spot.

“You have three choices. Either you cut the number of students going to the university, which we think is a bad idea, or you cut the spending on teaching and research, which is a bad idea, or you find other ways of getting money into the system, through businesses, and yes we think businesses should be stepping in with more bursaries and more support. Also, getting students to put more in as well. If the governments pulling back somebody else has to stand in.”

As universities struggle to pay the bills, some community colleges are having to turn students away because they have too many applicants. In The New York Times, Patrick M. Callahan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, explains why this is a sign of trouble.

“The community college is a second-chance institution for the country. Most people would agree that this is not a good time in terms of the economic competitiveness of the country to be turning people away.”

So what do you think? What should universities do to get back on track? Will the cost of higher education continue to rise?

Writer: Newsy Staff

Producer: Nathan Giannini