I spent five semesters (two years and a summer) at Santa Monica College. I paid $105 a credit. California residents paid $5 a credit. It was a nominal fee. The real cost was books. That’s obviously changed:
Santa Monica College, a public community college in California, has been so strained by cuts to state education funding that it has had to turn away students, increase tuition, and charge higher fees for classes. The school recently announced a plan to raise prices on its most popular courses, creating an unequal, two-track cost system and raising problems for cash-strapped students who are already struggling to keep up with rising tuition rates.
Santa Monica students attempted to attend a Board of Trustees meeting yesterday but were largely denied, with only a limited number of students allowed in and requests to move to a larger venue rejected. When more students attempted to enter the meeting, about 30 were pepper sprayed by police, the Associated Press reports
People shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a 99% movement. School used to be basically free. Now it costs 10,000 bucks a year. And what else changed? What did people get in return?
Wow. At my undergrad, a state school in the midwest, we paid $175 a credit. The idea of college being $5 a credit almost makes me head explode.
The idea is that education is a right. It used to be that we had a few states that thought that way. If you don’t get at least an Associate’s Degree at five bucks a credit, then you either didn’t want to go to college or you aren’t blessed with too many brains.
I’m someone who thinks everyone should be required to take entry level general college courses after high school (free of charge) so you’ll get no arguments from me.
I’ve paid back about $3,250 of my loans since December 2012 (graduated May 2011). Still unemployed. Owed roughly $50,000 before interest capitalization when repayment started.
My private loan interest rates are lower than the government’s. The government has me at 6.8%; Wells Fargo has me at two interest rates, totaling around 5.6% (one’s 3.5%, the other 6%); Great Lakes has me at about 4%.
Degree? Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Mathematics. $5 a credit? LOL! I paid a $30 per credit engineering fee, on top of the base cost of the credit.
Since December 2011*
Back in the dark ages, I went first to a state university – $800 total costs per semester. Then I transfered to a highly ranked East Coast school. $1800 per semester for everything. Minimum wage was $2 an hour. No student loans. A number of folks got National Defense scholarships for learning a non-European language.
The irresponsibility of these boards of trustees in the UC system, at DePaul University in Chicago, and now at Santa Monica College is breathtaking. Pepperspray is a form of chemical warfare. It is not to be taken lightly and used indiscriminately like the police in these cases seem to do. And the board members invariably try to sneak out of the meetings so that no one knows who they are.
Santa Monica College is still the UC Trustees. It’s part of the same system as UC-Davis.
When I went to college, pre-dark ages (Paleozoic?), I paid $475 a semester as a freshman rising to $600 as a senior. This was at a private college, Illinois Institute of Technology.
I believe U of I Champaign charged $150 a semester for tuition and every graduating senior in Illinois had a right to attend. Most flunked out after the first semester. Still, they had their chance. Now U of I Champaign, still state supported, is an elite school with more out of state and foreign students than Illinoisans.
BTW, the President recently resigned his $650K a year job under fire and dropped dwn to Professor at $320K a year.
No wonder our backs are breaking under taxes, yet the state is on the brink of bankruptcy (blamed by Republicans on Union contracts and public pensions).
No breaks for tuition, but obviously California has plenty in the budget for pepper spray.
BooMan, You should probably double that $10k figure for room, board and tuition/year at a state school. I’ve been putting small amounts of money away for many years for the b2 boy’s college costs and will still likely fall far short. It’s amazing to me that I was able to pay for my law school loan without any deferment of payments. That would be nearly impossible today for most folks. And I gaduated law school in 1990, not all that long ago.
yeah, Santa Monica is a purely commuter college. No housing of any kind. By national standards, it’s still cheap, too.
So, I take your point.
I haven’t really done much reading on this subject, but from my extremely high level view of the situation I fail to see how this is anything other than another unsustainable economic bubble.
Easy credit available from both private lenders and the government inflating prices combined with increasing pressure to go to college in the first place seem completely analogous to me to what we saw in the housing industry a few years back.