CALIFORNIA
10,000 students fight tuition hikes
By Alexandra Phillips
On March 15, some 10,000 community college
students from around California converged on the state capital,
Sacramento, to demand an end to program cuts and tuition
hikes.
Tuition was $11 per unit last fall. It will rise to $26 per
unit this fall. This means that next semester, the average
community college student will pay over $300 to enroll.
Community colleges have traditionally been an affordable
alternative for poor and working-class students, who received
valuable job training and certification. Now some 200,000
students will be forced out of school because they can't pay
the steep new tuition.
The march and rally to the State Capitol comes at a time
when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced a plan to cut
8,000 incoming first-year students from the California State
University and University of California system this fall.
Phillips is a youth and student organizer with the
ANSWER coalition.
Reprinted from the March 25, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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