[caption id=”attachment_80091″ align=”aligncenter” width=”512″] AP Photo/J Pat Carter
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The Clintons may have left the White House “dead broke,” but recently Hillary Clinton has been raking in speaking fees high enough to cover a lot of mortgages. The question is, who is paying for it?
While presidential hopeful Hillary rakes in generous speaking fees, students at many of these same colleges have faced increased tuition for the upcoming school year.
The Washington Post wrote Wednesday about eight universities which each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to have Clinton speak on campus during the past year. Inviting the former first lady costs a pretty penny. The University of Connecticut paid $251,250 to have her speak in April, while UCLA shelled out $300,000 for a speech in March and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas paid $225,000 for another in October. Not bad for an hour on the soapbox.
Who really paid these fees though? With the exception of a couple that claim alumni ponied up the cash, students at most of these universities bore the brunt of the expense.
From the list of schools published in the Post’s story, six have planned increases in tuition and fees for the 2014-2015 school year. The University at Buffalo is in the middle of a series of five years of staggered tuition increases. Furthermore, University of Connecticut students will be paying an additional 6.5 percent in the fall, UCLA students an extra 2.5 percent, and Colgate undergraduates 2.9 percent. Hamilton College students will not only face a 3.8 percent increase in tuition, but also a 4.8 percent jump in additional fees.
At the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where students are facing a 17 percent increased in tuition over the next four years, Elias Behelloun, the student body president spoke out against Hillary’s planned speech. He called the event “reckless spending” which “just belittles the sacrifices students are consistently asked to make.”
It’s hard to say who sounds more out of touch in this situation, school administrators who continue to inflate the cost of education with high ticket items like political speeches, or Clinton, who positions herself as a champion of the middle class while cashing in on such speaking deals.
Talk about robbing the poor students to pay the rich former Senator.
