The $1,068 hike passed by the Board of Regents came on top of a previously approved 8 percent hike for 2011-2012.

Incoming UCLA junior Alex Jreisat, who is transferring from a community college, said the latest increase will force him and other students to borrow more money and go deeper into debt.

“It’s already putting me in an uncomfortable situation financially,” said Jreisat. a 21-year-old anthropology major who traveled to San Francisco to speak at the board meeting. “It’s tragic that the regents keep balancing the budget on the backs of students … It’s a shame that the state has to put the regents in that position.”

Undergraduate and graduate tuition for California residents will jump to $12,192 a year, which doesn’t include room, board and roughly $1,000 in campus fees. That’s $1,890, or 18 percent, more than the amount UC undergraduates paid in the previous academic year and more than three times what they paid a decade ago.

About one-third of the estimated $216 million in new tuition revenue will be used for financial aid. Out-of-state and international students will pay about $36,000 in annual tuition.

The UC system’s move came just two days after the separate California State University system decided to raise tuition by 12 percent on top of a previously approved 10 percent increase. That system has 23 campuses and about 412,000 students.

Annual tuition for in-state CSU undergraduates will increase this fall to $5,472, not including room, board or campus fees averaging $950.

UC officials said the tuition increase in that system was necessary to preserve academic quality and student access to its 10 campuses, considered one of the nation’s leading public universities.

“I hate that we have been forced by our state’s politicians to raise tuition, but I hate even more the possibility of letting UC slide into becoming a second-rate institution,” regent Bonnie Reiss said before the 14-4 vote.

The latest tuition hike came in the wake of a state budget that reduced UC funding by $650 million, or about 20 percent. The system could lose another $100 million if the state generates less revenue than anticipated.

The move means that for the first time, UC students will be charged more in tuition than the state contributes for the cost of their education.

The UC system, which has about 220,000 students, faces a total budget shortfall of more than $1 billion due to the state budget and rising costs, mostly for employee retirement and health care benefits.

The tuition increase will only cover about a quarter of that shortfall. The remainder will be addressed by new revenue sources, administration cost-cutting and reductions in academic programs and student services, officials said.

Even with the tuition increase, administrators said the cost of a UC education is in line with that of comparable state universities in Illinois, Michigan and Virginia — and about one-third the sticker price of private institutions such as Stanford University or the University of Southern California.

The burden of higher UC tuition is expected to fall heaviest on middle-class students who don’t qualify for financial aid.

UC’s generous financial aid program will keep more than half of students from feeling the tuition increase this year, officials said. Needy students from families earning less than $80,000 have all of their tuition covered by financial aid, and the two most recent tuition increases will be waived for one year for aid-eligible students from families earning up to $120,000.

Chancellors of individual campuses had urged the regents to approve the tuition increase, saying failure to do so would lead to fewer course offerings, the disappearance of academic programs, fewer campus services and longer graduation times.

“We’ve taken heavy losses on our campuses,” said George Blumenthal, chancellor of UC Santa Cruz.

The lack of additional tuition revenue would mean a further “degradation of the educational experience for students,” he said.