“W” is for Waitlisted

The Thing About These Recent Tuition and Fee Hikes For Education

The estimated costs of attending college in the University Of California school system for undergraduates during the entire 2013-2014 academic school year was $36,078. With estimated costs for books and supplies at $1,500, living costs at $13,800, personal and transportation costs at $2,200, and health insurance fees at $1,700, the total average estimated cost for education can put you back $55,278 a year. As of today, approved to raise tuition as much as 28% by 2019 for at University of California schools.

For California State University Schools the price tag rings a little differently, but the costs for attending the institutions are continuing to rise as well. During the 1989-1990 academic school year, tuition fees were at $700. Today, according to the California State University website, undergraduate CSU students pay $5,472 and, on average, mandatory campus fees of $1,287 totaling their costs to $6,759.

The other day I was speaking with a friend, who also went to the same Cal State School, about registering for classes. She was nervous, as everyone else was, about getting the classes that she needs in order to graduate on time.

“I’m enrolled in one class,” my friend looked at me in the most depressed way, “but I’m on the waitlist for all of my other classes.”

She was number 11 on the waitlist for a math class that she needed in order to move on to the course, and she was hoping for that amount of people to fail the math class that was required for the one that she needed in order to enroll. I thought about the recent student “success fees” that were passed for students at CSUs to pay, and was wondering how this would help with hiring new faculty and adding more classes in the future.

At CSUs, “success fees” of up to nearly $800 per student have been imposed on students, all on top of tuition and other costs. The Cal State Board of Trustees, met in Long Beach last week to hear preliminary recommendations to inform students about the use of these fees, and to discuss a proposed 3% pay hike for Chancellor Timothy White, whose salary would rise from $410,000 to $422,300 (which includes a $30,000 donation), and campus presidents and other executives.

So why is tuition continuing to rise?

According to a report by California Common Sense titled, Winners and Losers: Corrections and Higher Education in California, which looked at expenditures on corrections and higher education from 1981 and 2011, a correlation was highlighted in the relationship between the state prison system and higher education. Over the years since 1981, government funding for higher education has decreased while tuition has increased, while funding for corrections has increased.

Today, more taxpayer money is used to put people in prison than to educate them.

There is now a growing privatization of higher education in the US, and student debt is only continuing to rise. However, around the world the trend for higher education costs are different.

According to The Times, Europe, Germany is now offering higher education free of charge to students both nationally and internationally. The German political figures have been quoted to call tuition fees “socially unjust.” There are also six other countries, according to The Washington Post, who are offering free, or almost free, education to national and international students as well.

Community College is still affordable, but according to a report conducted by Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, there will be 55 million job openings in the economy through the year 2020. Thirty-five percent will require at least a bachelor’s degree, 30 percent will require some college or an associate’s degree, and 36 percent will not require education beyond high school.

Here’s the thing though; the STEM field, Healthcare Professions, Healthcare Support, and Community Services will be the fastest growing occupations, but they will also require high levels of post-secondary education. Ultimately, higher education is, and will be, in higher demand, and the cost to achieve it continues to grow as well.

Past Writers of Kern Blog Challenge Posts