UC Berkeley has been reclassifying master’s degrees from “academic” to “professional” in a little-noticed drive that lets the university charge more for the programs — doubling or tripling the price, in some cases — while officially maintaining a tuition freeze across the University of California.

University records examined by The Chronicle show that in the past five years, UC Berkeley has reclassified 20 master’s degrees at nine graduate schools, collecting millions of dollars more from students despite the tuition freeze that has been in place for California residents — graduate students and undergraduates alike — across the UC system since 2011. Before then, just six master’s programs charged the extra money.

In all, almost one-fourth of UC Berkeley’s 113 master’s programs now charge elevated tuition.

“Professional degree supplemental tuition” adds thousands of dollars to the base tuition of $11,220 that graduate students pay each year. UC Berkeley officials say the supplemental tuition from the 26 graduate programs raised $62 million last year alone.

Meanwhile, the freeze on basic tuition has been in place for more than four years. Under an agreement between Gov. Jerry Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano, it will continue through next year in exchange for California’s help in paying UC’s pension obligations and an increase of 4 percent in state funding annually through 2018-19.

Higher costs under radar

The soaring tuition at Berkeley’s famed graduate programs has gone largely unnoticed as public debate has focused on undergraduate pricing across UC.

Brown, an ardent opponent of raising tuition, declined through a spokesman to comment when asked about UC Berkeley’s increases. Berkeley can raise the price of its graduate programs because of a loophole in the tuition freeze that allows individual campuses to charge their own level of tuition.

The first school on the Berkeley campus to adopt “supplemental tuition” in recent years was Social Welfare in 2010, when the annual in-state tuition and fees for a master’s degree climbed by 49 percent, from about $11,000 to nearly $17,000. A year later, the annual cost of a master’s at the School of Engineering more than tripled — from $12,950 to $44,985. Today, it stands at $51,165.

Since then, annual tuition and fees have more than doubled at some Berkeley graduate schools when their master’s programs were reclassified. In 2011, students getting a master’s in statistics at the College of Letters and Science paid $14,985, as did chemical engineering students at the College of Chemistry’s product development program. One year later, the chemical engineering degree price leaped to $37,340, while that for statistics rose to $30,340.

This year, two programs at the Graduate School of Education — Teacher Education and Leadership Education — adopted the supplemental tuition, raising the annual price by 43 percent: from $16,294 to $23,357. Next fall, students pursuing a master’s from the School of Journalism will pay 53 percent more a year, from $16,294 to $24,857.

UC says increases needed

UC Berkeley officials say the added tuition is necessary so programs such as engineering and multimedia journalism can keep pace with their evolving fields. Others, such as education, need the money to restore quality lost during budget cuts, officials say. They point out that at least a third of the supplemental tuition is used to provide financial aid for students in need.

At the College of Engineering, officials say students are actually saving money because the master’s of engineering program was shortened from two years to one.

“Students had to be out of the workplace and not earning for two years,” Fiona Doyle, dean of UC Berkeley’s graduate division and an engineering professor, said of the previous approach. “So the opportunity to get the degree (faster), albeit with an enormous amount of work, is more attractive.”

Yet most graduate programs have not been shortened, and most of their students are paying more.

“These are dramatic increases that really put students in a harder position,” said Ricardo Gomez, 26, who is earning his master’s in teacher education and had to come up with an extra $7,063 this year.

Gomez took out a $7,000 student loan and got a job, neither of which he had planned to do when he checked the price of the program last year.

“Before, I didn’t have to work and could focus on my studies and becoming a good teacher,” he said. “So it makes things a lot harder.”

Students feel excluded

Gomez now works for the Graduate Assembly, which advocates for UC graduate students. The students accuse UC Berkeley officials of failing to consult with them about fee increases in advance, as required by a 2012 state law. Similar complaints about UC were largely upheld by the state’s independent legislative analyst in April.

UC’s Board of Regents expects to tackle graduate school affordability this spring, said Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley.

“We need to pivot now (from an undergraduate focus) into taking a harder look at graduate education,” he said. “I can certainly sympathize with the students. They’ve been caught between a decline in public support and an increase in tuition. They’re the ones who’ve had to carry the burden.”

The regents are also expected to debate UC’s long-held view that the public university must continually try to be as good as top private schools like Harvard and Stanford — and whether state taxpayers also want that, Oakley said.

UC campuses “are competing with much better-funded institutions not only for research dollars but for the best and brightest faculty,” he said. “That can be a good or bad thing, and we’ll look at whether the competition is what Californians want” from UC.

But the possibility of relinquishing UC’s position as one of the greatest public universities in the world is unthinkable to those who have helped make it that way. They say they need to bring in more money because the state subsidy of roughly $7,900 per pupil isn’t enough for UC Berkeley, which is projecting a $150 million deficit this year.

“For years we were giving stuff away for free, and that was lovely and wonderful and amazing — but we can’t afford to do that anymore,” said Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy, one of three master’s programs that adopted supplemental tuition a decade ago. Before that, in the 1990s, just three charged the extra money: business, law and optometry.

“What changed is the university’s willingness to tolerate our losses,” said Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, who said the campus gives the school just $3 million a year to run its $9 million program. “Suffice to say, we were showing operating losses.”

Tech tools expensive

Once requiring just a pen, notepad and computer, journalism education today demands “pictures, sound and audio across a wide range of technologies. And that costs money,” said Wasserman, who delayed the price increase a year so students could plan for it. The higher tuition will bring in at least $900,000 a year, part of which will be used to pay for a second fundraising position, he said.

“I think I’ve been in denial a little bit,” said Matt Beagle, 31, a radio journalism student who has another year to go and works on campus in exchange for deeply discounted tuition. Next year he’ll have to come up with an extra $8,563 to cover the increase in tuition and fees.

“It’s a huge difference,” said Beagle, who already works three jobs. “A big reason I came to the Journalism School was because I knew I wouldn’t get into large debt.” Had the higher tuition been in place this year, he said, “it would definitely have affected my decision to go.”

Forced to skip meals

Budget cuts had forced the Graduate School of Education to reduce supervision of students doing fieldwork in classrooms, even as the state required stronger supervision, said Jessica Charles, director of professional programs. The new money will restore that, she said.

The extra tuition that Gomez and other students are paying will provide the program with $400,000 a year in revenue, half of which the school will use for financial aid to help students pay tuition.

Even so, Gomez, whose father does landscaping and whose mother is a retired computer chip inspector, said he sold a computer and may sell his car to help pay for school. He says he knows students who skip meals to save money or take out larger loans than the $7,000 he borrowed.

“I’m disappointed with how little public consideration and debate occurred before these fees have been set,” Gomez said. “It’s not like we’re becoming lawyers and going to be getting these huge paychecks. I know from several of my colleagues that this is not just me. A lot of people are feeling anxiety about this added pressure.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov