Voting No On Prop 92: Community Colleges Funding
January 15th, 2008
Written By: Adam Sussman
Proposition 92 is designed to lower student fee’s in community colleges across California. Additionally it limits future fee increases practically locking in low student tuition rates. The proposition also guarantees that the community college system would become independent from state politics and be self governed.
When I first read about this proposition I thought it sounded really good. My thoughts were that lowering fees would allow more students to attend college and increase their education. More students would mean more college educated workers in the work force making it better for society as a whole.
After careful review it appears this proposition may actually hurt the state more than benefit it. Although prop 92 says they will not hurt K-12 funding or raise taxes I cannot see where they will get the money to fund this. Our state is already running at a deficit and the only way to fund such a plan would be to raise taxes of pull from the funds of other critical programs.
One of the main reasons I am voting down this prop is from reading the stats which I found from the arguments in favor. The average student is 28 years old and they will see their income jump from $25,600 to $47,571 three years after earning their degree. That’s a nice raise in income and quite an incentive for students to pay their way.
In various places around the web I’ve read that the students fees may represent no more than 5 percent of the real cost for students. Living expenses, books and transportation are the real costs for students.
Unless I see a real plan demonstrating where the monies will come to support this proposition, I am shooting it down.
January 18th, 2008 12:51
The biggest cost, I think, especially for community college students, are textbooks. A class might cost $30 and then the textbook is $60. I’m thinking of going for open source, online textbooks for future classes, making the printed thing optional.
May 20th, 2008 17:06
Yes Kaolin, I agree with you. I’m a college student too and my biggest cost is textbook. I hope in the near future all textbook will be in pdf format coz I’m too lazy to read the printed book especially with >300 pages