“Education is our passport to the future,” Malcolm X famously said.
Similarly, George Washington Carver remarked that education is a key to “unlock the golden door of freedom.”
Ostensibly, without education, one has no future and no prospects to freedom. Nevertheless, education in the United States is quickly becoming wholly unaffordable, and many students are forced to deal with an incomprehensible dilemma: to skip meals regularly, take on full-time jobs, and surrender to the tyranny of rising tuition prices, or give up altogether, and lose their freedom and futures.
While UCLA is comparatively more affordable – for the quality of education it provides – than most private institutions, nonresident students still have to pay up to a whopping $65,000 a year to attend. This includes out-of-state, international and undocumented students not under the protection of California Assembly Bill 540.
In addition to this exorbitant price tag, nonresidents are also often treated as cash cows for the University of California. The Board of Regents has come to rely on these students as the subsidizers for resident students, and annual, yet unpredictable, tuition increases have become a mainstay for this community – some of whom have to deal with financial uncertainties in their home countries because of currency fluctuations.
Perhaps, this may have been a willing sacrifice that nonresidents chose to make. Nonetheless, one probably can be certain these nonresident students did not choose UCLA with the knowledge that tuition prices would increase almost annually, and that this may happen again next month when the regents meet at UC San Francisco to vote on the nonresident tuition hike they delayed voting on in March.
The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is parroted frequently as the defining and inalienable identity of America. Yet voting to hike tuition prices threatens to alienate the many nonresident students who contribute to the diversity of the UC’s campuses. The UC has consistently asserted its commitment to diversity, but hiking tuition boxes out certain communities from even entering campus – an epitome of hypocrisy.
Put bluntly, just as the White House wishes to build a wall to block “illegal immigrants,” the UC is also building a tuition wall that blocks nonresidents. The UC has repeatedly claimed it has no other option because of disinvestment from the state government. But how can California support more open borders yet simultaneously close off its schools?
The irony is befuddling and demoralizing.
And as in previous years, nonresident students are forced to wait with trepidation about whether the regents will indeed decide to increase tuition costs. If the tuition is to increase, some may be incapable of continuing their education. Dreams will literally shatter for some, but the regents don’t seem cognizant of this.
That exclusion restricts the UC’s many current and prospective international students to a future without educational freedom. And it would come from a state that, on one hand, claims to fight for justice and equality, but on the other, spits on individuals who are unable to afford to follow the rules of the system.
If the regents increase tuition fees next month, they must accept responsibility for being complicit in taking away the future and freedom of many. It would send a message that the UC’s motto, “fiat lux,” is a light that only a select few can celebrate.
Ang is a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council General Representative 1 office, and a third-year political science student.
The UC is not a self-funding organization, but largely funded by state tax dollars. Out of state students might be expected to “catch up” funding as they and their families have not be contributing to the state’s tax coffers. This tuition increase is only temporary as you can claim residency in only a year.
The alternative is to go to a private school, like the one cross town, and pay $52,000 for tuition alone for four years. The Regents should be congratulated for keeping tuition so low in the face of “industry” price pressure.