STAFF EDITORIAL
Once again, students attending one of the 23 CSU campuses are facing a potential tuition increase.
Word of the tuition hike floated around at a CSU Board of Trustees meeting last month. However, more-official discussion on if, or possibly when it would be implemented, will not be made until January.
Demonstrators from Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Long Beach and other CSU campuses, came together at CSU Headquarters in Long Beach to protest the potential increase.
Many students are worried that another tuition hike, raising fees to about $5,743, would effectively price them out of a higher education.
We, as students, are in a difficult situation. The economy sucks, we can’t get decent-paying jobs, and our education is becoming completely unaffordable. Paying for tuition is already hard enough, and some of us are barely getting by.
The possibility of tuition increasing is a terrible position in which to put students. Many would agree that today tuition is already too expensive, not even factoring in the increase.
Compared to other countries that go to college for free, or are even paid to attend college, financing a higher education in the United States is a joke. You almost have to sell a kidney and your first born just to attend for a semester, not to mention all of the add-ons. A $65 fee to apply for graduation? Really?
It’s safe to say that for the majority of us, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) had our vote for president. We were hoping that one day, we would be able to pursue an education and not have to declare bankruptcy, or be stuck paying student loans for the next 20 years.
Instead we got Donald Trump, and what happens next is anybody’s guess. But with no relief in sight, where does it end?
A report by the CSU shows that administrators are aware that some students at CSUDH, and other campuses, have issues with homelessness and food insecurity.
If someone really has to choose between eating and having a place to live, and their tuition, what does that say about how our country values education, values us, values the future?
As the next generation to take the reins of society, we will be inheriting the fruits of today’s labor. The question is, do we want to pick those fruits? Is this a world we want to live in?
Faculty, staff and students coming together to march through campus displays a powerful message: that we’re willing to take this journey together. However, if tuition hikes and increases are in the future, that journey will be much more difficult for everyone involved.
Hopefully, the Board of Trustees will come to their senses and invest less in administrator salaries and more in education, more in us, and more in the future.
