[deMolay]

Hitting the Wall: Associated Press

Protesters gather at UCLA to oppose UC fee hike By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Writer Michael R. Blood, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 34 mins ago:
LOS ANGELES – Hundreds of protesters chanted, marched and took over a building Thursday on the UCLA campus, where University of California regents were scheduled to vote on a 32 percent student fee increase.
The UC Board of Regents is considering boosting undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — by $2,500 by 2010. …

[Ferretlover]

Shouldn't be a problem. Just don't go for a semester. I am pretty sure the school would be happy to reconsider.

[pup55]

The demonstrators outside UCLA's Covel Commons building chanted, beat drums and waved signs urging "No fee hikes" and "Wanted: Leadership."

Yes, these kids NEED to get a little more education....

What they are saying is "the taxpayers need to subsidize my education a little bit more"....

they are also saying "any administrator that wants be honest, and actually charge me what it takes to get an education is a poor leader"....

Honestly.

They should take the number of kids, and the number of dollars that it costs to run the school, and divide A into B, and the fees should be that much.....

[Arsenal]

People on this board still think there will be a slow decline?? At some point people are going to be pissed enough to do something and that slow decline will accelerate into a fast collapse.

[Windmills]

They should take the number of kids, and the number of dollars that it costs to run the school, and divide A into B, and the fees should be that much.....

I agree. However, I wonder if that's what is happening. Tuition at all places of higher education, except some community colleges, has been racing far ahead of inflation for many years. It just smells a little fishy, like they're just trying to soak kids for as much money as they can borrow from the government. If the government offers $XX,000 total for undergraduate education, then the price of tuition will mysteriously rise all around the country toward that amount so that students are compelled to take out huge loans and hand them over to the schools. It seems like a scam to me, especially with the worthless for-profit degree mills like U of Phoenix getting in on the action, too.

[Dr. Ofellati]

Start with this:

Prior to the oil age, and the last 40 years in particular, education has been the exclusive domain of the rich.

It is now reverting to that - credit drying up for student loans, costs going up, and so on.

Finish with this:
Most universities are run in a ghastly inefficient fashion that causes tuition to be more than it should be.

Case in point - Most colleges charge on the order of 4 grand for food for one year.

Figure 260 days. That's about 15 bucks a day for one person. Way more than is required.

One of my kids went to a school that wanted 6 grand a year, with no option to pass (wonder why not?). That's over 20 bucks day. Ridiculous.

College education could be done for much cheaper than it currently is if colleges learned how to tighten their belts about 20 notches.

[basil_hayden]

I'd say they're trying to carburete the number of kids going to college to send more to the factories, but there aren't any factory jobs in the USA.

[Fishman]

LMAO
Hey California, guess what, you can't feed,medicate, and educate all of Mexico. You can't outlaw a carbon based economy and have an economy at this point. You can't provide a nanny state if you are broke. The question is, will California figure this out before it's total collapse. Bets?

[Arsenal]

Nope

[heroineworshipper]

At $10,300 they're now paying 2x what I paid in grad school for just tuition 10 years ago. The government mortgages parents use for tuition will now have to be subsidized to $900,000,000. How the wheel goes round.

[Stonemason]

The special interests are far too enmeshed to provide anyone with fairness. Oh but democracy (forget republicanism) is so progressive!!!...

[Pfish]

They should be more worried about their beatdown they are going to take next weekend on the football field vs. the mighty Trojans.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Looks like they are pretty pissed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33UU6MKu ... r_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM4sl7WZ ... feature=iv

[Mesuge]

Yep, most likely some of the Calif kids had seen in the news, the ongoing student protests and campus occupation, which has been spreading from Austria, Germany across Europe in the past several weeks.

The reality is the U.S. kids in the final moment will only get tear gas and police clubbing and what have you, while their euro-friends might actually get at least some wishy washy compromise with their corpo-state..

Btw. those videos are in fact quite hilarious, enraged skinny teenagers, protecting their ipods in hands, against bodybuilder type goons, and the administration watching it calmly from windows above. As always shouting on the wrong corner..

[dorlomin]

The reality is the U.S. kids in the final moment will only get tear gas and police clubbing and what have you, while their euro-friends might actually get at least some wishy washy compromise with their corpo-state...

Nothing radicalises like a lecture from professor billy club.

Still the US has been a incubator of the many of the worlds most outstanding minds over the past 90 years and its elite universtities are a genuine source of world class intellectuals, MIT, CalTech, GeorgiaTech, Harvard..... the list goes on. Only a handful of EU institutions have rivalled them (Oxbridge the only one too rival for Nobels). If America has begun to 'eat the seeds' this badly then its era will truly pass. But its too easy to see a short term event and read a trend. I doubt the economic managers will want too see talent exluded from the top tier. That is a personal opinion I doubt its widely held round here.

My impression of an institution like UCLA is that it supplies the middle tier technocrats and manager to the economy. The economy could sustain a couple of years of reduction in those positions.. but complex societies need their middle managers.

[Mesuge]

Update from yesterday's demo:

LOS ANGELES-A demonstration Thursday by about 2,000 protesters at UCLA centered around the passage of a 32 percent student fee hike by the UC Board of Regents.

After the regents concluded their meeting at UCLA, about 1,000 demonstrators, most of them students, surrounded the meeting venue as hundreds of UCPD officers and members of the California Highway Patrol donning riot gear and rubber bullet rifles established a security perimeter in front of the them.

The perimeter ultimately broke the picket line, allowing administrators, including UC President Mark Yudof, to exit the area in several white vans after briefly being surrounded by the crowd.

UC officers tasered at least two UCLA students in order to clear a road for two vans transporting administrators away from the building. A statement by UCLA said two people were "observed receiving treatment for exposure to pepper spray."

Janelle Biray, one of the two students who was tasered, said that the police used excessive force.

"We just hooked arms and then the police came and they physically moved us away and we maintained our silence," Biray said. "We didn't try to attack them."

....

Many UCLA students interview on the campus said they were unable to attend the demonstrations because the campus was in the eighth week of its nine-week academic quarter and many students are focused on their own personal lives.

"It was a very poor time in our schedule," said Angela Arunarsirakul. "Some people couldn't afford to lose that class time (while) some students ae not as informed as they could be."

http://www.dailycal.org/article/107594/ ... s_approved

Dear Angela, you are absolutely correct, the best time for demo
is only after laundery and before TV soap, i.e. weekend afternoon,
in that fashion you won't inconvenience nobody.

[dsula]

They should take the number of kids, and the number of dollars that it costs to run the school, and divide A into B, and the fees should be that much.....

Education is an investment. Each person should get one educational path for free up to the highest level he can achieve. That would be money much better spent than on army bases around the globe.

[Stonemason]

They should take the number of kids, and the number of dollars that it costs to run the school, and divide A into B, and the fees should be that much.....

Education is an investment. Each person should get one educational path for free up to the highest level he can achieve. That would be money much better spent than on army bases around the globe.

Whose money is being taken under threat of violence or torture (prison) for this to happen?

[Fishman]

dsula
My happiness is an investment too. Can you arrange rainbows to greet me each morning as I awake? Perhaps unicorns on my lawn as I drive off to work all day to pay for your dreams? Certainly these are as reasonable as your requests.

[Gorm]

Guess there is not mutch point in explaning what good migth come from a well educated society.

There seems to me that many americans today are against any cost that will benefit the americans of tomorrow.