Student protesters tried to storm a trustees meeting and were met with force by campus police. Many of the students were pepper-sprayed during the altercation. This was the scene that transpired last night at Santa Monica College where students demonstrated their anger towards the university’s plans to offer courses at four times the current cost by shouting “No cuts, no fees, education should be free.”
When public universities are forced to raise tuition, outraged students, particularly in places like California, are letting many politicians and legislators off the hook.
Faced with an oncoming ‘bubble’ over loans and seeing valuable funding resources being directed to ‘bogus’ offices and departments, students should be asking tough questions of their representatives in their state capitols.
Even with tuition costs rising dramatically, Governor Brown and the California legislature passed and signed a DREAM Act in their state back in October of 2011. The California DREAM Act now provides in-state tuition rates and makes financial resources available to students who are in the state illegally. The money to cover the difference had to come from somewhere and the Governor and legislature figured that California students could, and should, bear the brunt of it. Governor Brown and politicians who supported the DREAM Act put illegal aliens ahead of the needs of its own citizens.
But California is not the only state that puts its taxpayers on the hook for subsidizing the post-secondary education of illegal alien. A number of other states (Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Washington, Wisconsin, just to name a few) allow illegal aliens access to in-state tuition rates, and a number of other states are considering this legislation. California, due to its large illegal alien population and its massive budget deficit (coincidence anyone?), is the first state to manifest the inevitable ill effects of this policy. The remainder of the states should pay particular close attention to what is happening in California.
Any student (or taxpayer for that matter) protesting out of control tuition rates in California and elsewhere should remember that as they write checks to their favorite institution of higher learning, but especially keep it in mind next time they enter the ballot box.