College Tuition Crisis

The University of California Board of Regents announced a staggering 32 percent midsemester tuition hike. Students responded by demonstrating, chanting, and occupying administration buildings.

California is leading a national trend. Higher education is becoming less affordable across the country every year. And the problem is spreading nationwide, writes Kevin Carey of Newsweek.

It takes two thirds of both houses in the California General Assembly to raise taxes.

“The young men and women rushing to the barricades on UC campuses are Ronald Reagan’s children, victims of a failed antigovernment movement that managed to turn people against taxes while leaving their appetite for public services unchecked.”

Each time a recession hits, tax-frightened state legislators raise revenue by cutting university budgets disproportionately and allowing tuition to make up the difference, a back-door levy that hits poor and middle-class students the hardest.

“As a result, more students are borrowing more money for college than ever before, and loan default rates have increased sharply in just the last two years. Increasingly, low-income students are getting priced out of four-year universities and forced into lower-cost community colleges—or out of higher education altogether.”

My grand daughter will graduate from California State University-Chico this next summer. She has both worked and attended the University since graduation from high school. She is trying to figure out how she can go to law school and afford to pay for it as I write this. It is an extremely difficult financial barrier. I can attest to that from my own experience.

I was in law school in California while Ronald Reagan was governor. Of course he held to the political view that government “is the problem.” That somehow wealth would trickle down to the working classes and all would be well. Privatizing would solve everything and reduce the size of government. He is revered by the Republican Party who view taxes as an evil thing.

Truth is, from my vantage point, that the problems seem to lie in how well things are balanced. I can agree that too large a government can be unnecessary and oppressive. But recent decades also indicate that some things can be privatized but if too broad results in imbalance. With respect to finances to attend college private loan companies that specialize in giving tuition loans are too expensive for working class students to handle. Direct loans from the government at reasonable interest rates to students would appear to be a better approach. No kid, who is intelligent and capable of mastering college level courses should be denied an opportunity to obtain a college education in parity with upper class kids.

California has had something of an explosion of prison expansion. People seem to accept the costs of prisons as being more necessary than educating their own kids. I disagree. I’d rather pay taxes on education of our kids than warehousing convicts.

Maybe someday voters will finally get it in their heads. There is a need for balancing between governmental and privatization. Perhaps the trick is to be able to identify politicians that can also see the need for balance.

Related posts:

1. Gibbons dithers while Nevada schoolchildren suffer
2. Education is essential to the future of America
3. A Pahrump Treasure: Great Basin College
4. Revolutionizing Education
5. The Alliance for Excellent Education