Pricing Students Out of School

The University of California's Regents recently announced plans to raise undergraduate fees, the functional equivalent of tuition, an eye-popping 32% for the upcoming school year.  While desperate times do call for desperate measures—and these are indeed desperate times for California’s budget—erecting economic obstacles to educational achievement will only hurt the state in the long-run.  California became a leader in high-tech industries like software and semi-conductors by fostering the type of innovation that only comes from providing economic opportunity for all, and it can doom itself to long-term economic obsolescence by making higher education a luxury good.

A diverse and educated workforce is the hallmark of a thriving economy.  California’s multi-tiered college and university system has long been its engine, ensuring that young Californians could reach their full potential and drawing top-notch students from across the country and world to learn and settle in the state.  This, in turn, contributed to a robust economic and civic life, providing a platform for broad-based prosperity.  These dramatic fee increases will effectively end that shared prosperity.

I won’t pretend that I have solution for California’s budget crisis.  I can, however, say for certain that effectively closing the doors of secondary education to anyone who isn’t wealthy or able to take on a lifetime of debt is not only antithetical to American values, but bad for the future of the state.