Campus Progress reported Monday that a proposed bill to create a two-tiered tuition system in California is gaining traction again.
The original plan, shelved because of the backlash from all walks of life back in April, would create a self-supporting foundation that would help meet demand for overbooked state-financed courses by offering others at four times the cost.
California State Senator Roderick D. Wright from the Los Angeles area introduced the plan.
The left-leaning Campus Progress noted how bad this would be.
Conservatives are just as enflamed by the idea, because they generally want liberty and freedom of opportunity for everyone.
Proponents in California are pushing so hard for this because the state’s 112 community colleges have been hit hard by budget cuts. They have forced them to turn away hundreds of thousands of students this year alone, according to a recent article by Paul Fain at InsideHigherEd.com.
Fain noted that “many observers applaud Santa Monica’s overall goal, but not its methods.
Privatization of community colleges is downright heresy in California. And the proposal erred, some said, by trying to charge different prices for the same courses. New courses in the voluntary pilot program proposed by the legislation would need to be focused on technical education or work-force development,” according to Fain.
The plan could even be regarded as “socialism,” according to Rob Rader, a Santa Monica College trustee.
In his own words, originally published by the Los Angeles Times:
“It’s an opportunity to make a very progressive policy, an opportunity to be Robin Hood,” said Rader. Board members are also calling the plan “Socialism in action.”
Despite the good will, the plan calls for two classes. Lower income levels will have to pay a set price, and a higher income level will have to pay up to four times more for different college courses.
Although this is being proposed as a serious way to get finances in California in order, what is being created here is a new system that will lock needier students out of the more expensive, “less demanded” classes, and will guarantee that only wealthy students will be able to take more expensive courses.
Despite ‘help’ from the federal government over the decades, the price of tuition generally never decreases.
The more subsidies the government throws at higher education—the more they are willing to spend. Often times they pad their own faculty or administrators’ salaries.
