These Students Are Demanding Higher Education at Lower Costs

[marmar]

from In These Times:


These Students Are Demanding Higher Education at Lower Costs
At last, a nationwide movement for free college is taking off.

BY REBECCA NATHANSON


[font size="1"]Hundreds of UC Santa Barbara students gather in front of Storke Tower during the Million Student March on Nov. 12, 2015. (Kenneth Song/News-Press/Zuma Press/Newscom)[/font]

On Nov. 12, 2015, students at the University of California, Berkeley, redecorated their idyllic campus with a “wall of shame.” On pieces of paper taped to the administration building, students proclaimed how much debt they had assumed in order to attend the prestigious university—for some, more than $160,000.

With chants of, “Free college: That’s our right. What do we do? Fight, fight, fight,” the students called for an increasingly popular solution to the growing burden of student debt: abolishing tuition entirely at public colleges and universities.

Throughout most of the 20th century, many public colleges and universities were free, or nearly so. California’s landmark 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, for example, was essentially a pledge to educate all residents of the state who wanted an education for free or for a nominal fee. But the plan was soon attacked by Gov. Ronald Reagan, who painted free public higher education as welfare for privileged twenty-somethings and began shifting costs to students when he took office in 1967. Today, the total cost of tuition and fees at the state’s public University of California campuses stands at $12,240 for in-state residents. City University of New York (CUNY), likewise, didn’t begin charging tuition until 1976. It now costs $6,330 per year for in-state students, not including fees.

The idea of free higher education has gained new political life thanks in part to a high-profile champion. Sen. Bernie Sanders has made tuition-free college a signature issue of his presidential campaign, calling it the key to a “stronger economy and a stronger democracy.” Under Sanders’ plan, the federal government would cover the cost by imposing a financial transaction tax on Wall Street. Sanders has stressed that public universities are already tuition- free in Germany, Mexico and many other countries, and said in a June 2015

Students rose to the challenge this fall, staging a Million Student March on Nov. 12, 2015 with demonstrations on more than 100 campuses. The protests centered on three demands: tuition-free public universities, a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers and cancellation of student debt. ...............(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18675/these-students-are-demanding-higher-education-at-lower-costs4

[upaloopa]

1. The people who hate Wall Street and will take

no money from Wall Street want Wall Street to pay for their education.

Biting the hand that educates you.