Compared to their parents, UC students today have to pay more, have to go deeper into debt, and to expect fewer services, and that's not their fault. Just be glad the UC system hasn't instituted the mandatory furloughs that the CSU system has, effectively shortening each semester by more than a week. College level education in this state is an utter mess. They have every right to be upset IMO, even if they are doing the silly protest and all that that college students always do.
Alternatively, one might increase the available tax deduction for interest on student loans, which is capped at $2,500 per annum. I fail to see what economic purpose is served by having students graduate with $40,000 or more of debt when their earning potential is lowest.
Seriously though, something is very wrong with the UC system. I was discussing this over lunch with Mrs Browl, who graduated UCLA in 2003. At that time annual tuition was $3,429. with these newest increases it's now just over $10,000. It kept shooting up about 15% or more each year even as the bull market was in full swing (and money was pouring into state coffers). Now the state is in a fiscal bind and somehow the UC system has managed to rack up $13 billion in future healthcare liabilities as well as massive pension obligations: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/21908
Edit: here's some #s on tuition fees to illustrate the point:
1999-2000 $3,429
2000-2001 $3,429
2001-2002 $3,429
2002-2003 $3,384
2003-2004 $4,984
2004-2005 $5,684
2005-2006 $6,141
2006-2007 $6,636
2007-2008 $7,126
2008-2009 $7,788
2009-2010 $8,958
2010-2011 $10,302
I can't help thinking about risk with regard to the financing of education. My mind takes an immediate short cut (as in, my point may not be well reasoned) to commentary I've read that describes how e.g. the move from "traditional" pensions to 401K plans and similar personal investment vehicles has shifted risk from companies to individuals.
In education, it seems (at least, on the surface, in financial figures quoted in the news) that students and their families are being asked to take on more and more risk with regard to students' education. Try viewing the system as having two parties: The student (and their social circle), who benefits from gaining a more competitive (and, depending upon your perspective, personally enriching) skillset; and society, which ostensibly gains a member capable of greater contributions.
With employees and employers, it might seem that the employer/company is better able to take on and to manage risk. Greater financial resources, and greater ability to contract or employ professional advice and to do so in an efficient manner, sharing the benefit of that advice across multiple employees. Instead, financial management has been pushed to the employees; employers' liability has been minimized.
(That's the argument that's been made. In light of developments in the last several years, I'm not sure it's a valid one.)
In education, it seems that society might better be able to carry the risk of initial career choices. But that risk has been pushed increasingly to students.
The idea of society taking on greater risk in managing tertiary education may fall down in that (U.S.) society does not directly tell students what careers to pursue. Thank goodness; I doubt that's what we want. Although it can influence by determining funding differentials including scholarships, government funding of research, etc.
But I'm not arguing for going such a route whole hog (entirely). I'm not really making much of an effective argument at all. Rather, I'm asking, what is the allocation of risk in the U.S. tertiary education system/market. Has it been changing (it seems so, to me), and if so, what are the mechanisms and reasoning behind this?
Lest this question seem merely "academic" (sorry), there is also plenty of public discussion about the effects of these high levels of personal debt resulting from education expenses. New doctors who don't go into primary care not just because specialization pays better but because, even if they are called to primary care and are willing to forgo specialization's larger pay, the need to pay off enormous loans prevents them from making that choice. New lawyers who feel compelled to go the corporate route for similar reasons.
There's also what's been happening to the job market for educators: Instructors spread across three part time jobs at different institutions. Benefits declining or not offered. Traditional, "tenured" positions (whether you like them or not) increasingly rare.
I don't have the answers, and I'm not involved with this enough to have much first hand experience. My perceptions, that form the basis of my question, may be wrong. I hope my question was worth raising, and that I didn't totally munge it in posing it here.
Busy with their high school and without the right to vote? This is the first time those people can say anything officially and be taken seriously. If they don't like what's happening, then I think they're doing pretty well - started to get involved as early as they could.
to turn you statement around, for a bunch of kids fresh out of high school getting their first dose of political reality, "you are going to be about $50k in debt when you graduate because your elders and betters have screwed up the economy so badly" is a pretty poor payoff for the last several years of academic effort.
If you want something fund it with your own effort, not by pointing a gun at someone and telling them it's good for them.
I have extensive first-hand experience of barely scraping by, and reject your analogy of 'pointing a gun at someone'. For things like education and healthcare (which liberals like myself believe to be worth public funding), some compare it to sticking up the weakest and poorest and taxing them farther into poverty, whereas the reality is that those services, which are almost essential for economic security and advancement, are stuck behind a big paywall and those who object to the existence of this wall have guns pointed at them. Yesterday, literally so, in the form of riot guns.
High school graduates have the lowest earning power and the highest rate of unemployment. I don't see the social good in saddling them with tens of thousand in debt so that when they graduate they are forced towards the most lucrative offer. That's how we ended up with a shortage of scientists and engineers and a surplus of quantitative analysts on Wall Street.