Students resist rising costs and cutbacks

The myth of upward mobility through education is the basis of the so-called “American Dream.” But college education has become a financial Mount Everest that the majority of the working class cannot climb.

A recent report indicates that more than 45 percent of four-year college students are working more than 20 hours per week. In community colleges 60 percent work more than 20 hours a week, with one-quarter of these full-time students actually working more than 35 hours a week. (U.S. Department of Education, 2007-2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study)

A student at Stony Brook SUNY recently told this writer: “I am working part time — well, 37 and a half hours a week. I have no time to do the reading. I had hoped to cut my hours, but my dad is in the construction industry, so he couldn’t help out,” she added. “I am thinking of dropping out. Stony Brook’s tuition went up a thousand dollars this year.”

Students face unemployment, debt

College students are leaving because it is just too hard to support themselves and go to school at the same time. Sixty-two percent of students are entirely responsible for paying for their college educations. (publicagenda.org)

Unemployment among youth is 19.1 percent, while joblessness for 16- to 24-year-old Black men has reached Great Depression-like proportions — 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. (Washington Post, Nov. 23)

College costs have increased by more than 400 percent in the last 25 years, while the median family income has increased less than 150 percent. (National Center for Public Policy and Education)

Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college. Their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they finish. College graduates are delaying marriage, children and home buying because of their debts. (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 4) Those who drop out with debt face low wages or unemployment but must still make loan payments.

Budget cuts hurt public education

Youth cannot look to federal, state or local government to solve this crisis. As of a year ago, at least 16 states had cut funding for kindergarten to 12th grade and early education; reduced access to child care and early education; and over 21 states had implemented or proposed cuts to public colleges and universities. Since then, it has only gotten worse.

Public colleges teach 70 percent of college students in the U.S. Student enrollment has increased during the current recession, but states have responded by canceling classes, raising tuition, crowding courses, ending extracurricular activities and firing staff.

Since July the states have lost $4 billion in appropriations for higher education. Facing depression-level unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies, state tax revenues have fallen. California, Nevada and Oregon have seen double-digit reductions in educational subsidies. California community college leaders fear they could end up turning away as many as 250,000 students in the coming months. (Newsweek, Dec. 13)

The state of Washington has reduced its expenditure for public education by 14 percent. Arizona public universities have laid off thousands of employees and canceled scores of classes and programs in the past year. This is the pattern across the country. The language program at the University of Idaho has been gutted. Thousands of science, language, music, math and theater programs have been terminated in public colleges across the country. Newsweek notes that colleges are packing more students into fewer courses.

Students resist higher costs, cuts

FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) organizer Larry Hales said the March 4th Mobilization movement, spearheaded by University of California students who have been carrying out mass protests, is an attempt to link issues affecting youth. “We saw [recently] that New York’s MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority] proposed the cancelation of student metro passes. Communities are resisting profit-making charter schools,” said Hales, who sees “a direct correlation between the declining number of jobs and the rise in numbers of youth going into prison and the military.”

“California students have led the way in militancy but there is a rising student movement in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. The call for a day of protest on March 4th is resonating,” Hales says, “because of budget cuts and rising tuition rates. And most of the students who are activists are anti-imperialist and anti-war. There is a real potential for a militant national student movement come spring.”

FIST says youth have a right to “free public education and job training with stipend” and says spending for war, jails and prisons, and corporate welfare is “criminal.”

Cottin teaches at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, N.Y.