Whenever there are budget cuts, higher education is inevitably one of the first victims. UCSC alone is expected to face $31 million in budget cuts during the 2011-2012 academic year, and tuition is slated to go up again, for a total increase of 40 percent since 2009-2010. This is posing an increasing burden on the students, and some end up leaving school with debts running into six figures. That’s even before they start having a job, a family, a mortgage, and kids, who will inevitably want to go to college too.
Whenever there are budget cuts, higher education is inevitably one of the first victims. UCSC alone is expected to face $31 million in budget cuts during the 2011-2012 academic year, and tuition is slated to go up again, for a total increase of 40 percent since 2009-2010. This is posing an increasing burden on the students, and some end up leaving school with debts running into six figures. That’s even before they start having a job, a family, a mortgage, and kids, who will inevitably want to go to college too. The problem is that $100,000 in college debt paid out over 30 years comes to $500,000—if you don’t default, because these debt obligations aren’t erased. It’s a racket, indeed. $96 billion is loaned annually to attend college, graduate, trade or professional schools, and this doesn’t even include “shadow” borrowing.
On Tuesday, the students at UCSC decided to fight back. Rather than anticipating a future of debt slavery, hundreds of students gathered on the East Field to demand free education. They said it with their bodies, knowing that the way things are going, they might otherwise have to sell said bodies just to cover the cost of Calc 101. As an airplane flew overhead, the students spelled out FREE EDUCATION, some of them shirtless (had they lost their shirts on usurious loans?), and some of them stark naked (perhaps it wasn’t just their shirts that they stand to lose).
“No one with the capacity should be denied access to higher education because they can’t afford it,” said Christine King, who teaches Transformative Action at Kresge College. Yesterday’s spelling event was just the start of a two-day, statewide effort by students to put a stop to budget cuts to higher education. It will be followed today by a noontime demonstration at Bay Street Plaza. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Intel Daily.
