Something worth protesting about

By Mary Sanchez

For a handful of sporadic days this fall, California's most storied university campuses appeared to be channeling the '60s era of student protests. Students barricaded themselves in buildings, pumped out lists of demands to administrators and staged what they called study-ins.

But the issue at the heart of the unrest was not war. It was something many would consider more mundane: tuition increases. Unlike back in the day, the protests were shut down relatively quickly by campus police with assists by other law enforcement. Students at Berkeley who sneaked into a building with the intent of occupying it were simply charged with trespassing and released for Thanksgiving break.

The protesters' efforts drew a fair amount of criticism from editorial writers and other upright citizens, but they did make their point. A 32 percent fee increase enacted by the Regents of the University of California - in the midst of one of the worst recessions in recent memory - is a sign of a crisis in higher education. One of the sustaining elements of the U.S. economy - a solid well-educated middle class - is in jeopardy.

Access to a high quality public higher education in America is slipping away for many as states cut their budgets and tuition and fees rise. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reported a 439 percent increase in published college tuition and fees between 1982 and 2007. Meanwhile, median family income rose

147 percent. (These numbers are not adjusting for inflation.) It should come as no surprise that student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade. And when you consider the other essential costs - such as health care and housing - that also have risen faster than family incomes, it's not difficult to imagine that many kids of modest means are forced to defer, or even forget, going to college.

And yet, in most portions of the country, the silence is palpable. Oh, sure, parents and students grumble at the rising costs. Chancellors grouse and fume as they slice staff and increase class sizes. But there has yet to be the sort of concerted outcry that could force a reworking of how the nation's public colleges and universities are funded. Few are discussing ways to maintain, much less extend, the opportunities that higher education makes available to hard-working students who want to rise in the world. And that's remarkably shortsighted, given the evidence that holding a college degree is increasingly imperative to achieving the financial stability families need to thrive. The best-educated generation in the nation's history is heading toward retirement. And the younger workers that will have to replace them are on track to continue falling behind in educational attainment. The situation is not merely fallout from the recession. Recently declining tax revenues to fund public higher education have only exacerbated a problem that has been incubating for decades. Here's what I fear: The people with the most clout to push change, those with higher incomes and the resulting positions of authority, will be the least inclined raise the necessary fuss. The wealthy will continue to send their children to private schools.

Those at the other end of the economic scale - the poor - will be soothed by continued access to need-based financial aid.

Stuck in the middle will be the struggling lower middle class. The vast majority of American families don't have the deep enough pockets to meet the rising costs of college, nor are they needy enough to qualify for programs aiding the lower end of the economic scale.

In California, some students chanted, “Fee hike, we strike!” As if they viewed themselves workers, imperative to the production process of an educational assembly line. That's not far from the truth. Want to shore up the middle class? Create jobs? Strengthen America? Then make higher education affordable for all who qualify.

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