California Students Rally Against Tuition Hikes
Video by Angel Luna Story by Felicia Vasquez

On April 21 st college students, professors, counselors throughout the state, started they're day before the sun rose. They loaded into buses, vans, and carpooled from they're campuses, headed for the state capital. All from different, schools, disciplines, backgrounds and class standings, they came together marching from Raley field to the state capitol, united by their concerns for the value of they're education. Or from Governor Schwarzenegger's perspective, the “devalue” of education. As of February the Governor sent out his 2008/2009 proposed budget for the state, cutting 4.8 billion from education.

As a recently transferred student from San Jose City College to San Francisco State University, this for me translates to less classes offered, an extended graduation date, possibly no financial aid(Cal-Grants will also be cut) and altogether a dim outlook on my future. Some of my peers are already experiencing the first wave of cuts. A friend of mine was explain that she may not get into the credential program she applied for, as a result of the cuts, the program will only be able to accept fifty applicants. This is a prime example of the trickle down effect, specifically in education. Less resources in higher education equals less qualified teachers which raises the teacher per student ratio.

As you can see, not only is higher education getting hit hard, but K-12 will be taking some extreme blows as well. Sports, music and various extra-curricular activities will be gone, schools will have to be shut down, class sizes will increase. Its bad enough that within the past three years districts have already reduced school days, I see more and more kids on the streets as early as noon. It seems that every year education becomes less of a right and more of a privilege. So my question is, what will happen to these kids, whose future has already been compromised? Where will they go, with nothing to do? Will college be attainable for them, or even be considered as an opportunity? How can we maintain an economical flow if there are less professionals in the work place, because they're two to five classes away from graduation but can't afford tuition? The cuts to education for the 2008/2009 fiscal year are much too sever and can cripple California's economy.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:50 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.