Thousands of students who serve in the National Guard or
military reserves will pay lower student fees in the near future if
Gov. Gray Davis signs a bill that will likely pass through the
legislature with bipartisan support.
It is difficult to oppose an effort to send young men and women
to college ““Â especially when those men and women do the
difficult and dangerous job of protecting the country in wartime.
Still, the question must be asked: Why is it the state is ready to
assist those seeking a public education when they serve in the
military, but not in other cases?
Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, authored the assembly bill
that would prevent the University of California from charging more
than $960 in student fees for those in the National Guard or
reserves. Currently nearly every other state subsidizes public
higher education for such students, so the bill seems logical.
Davis’s May revisions to his budget proposal already plan for
the funding of the bill, even though it hasn’t passed yet.
And while it is difficult to argue with the bill itself, it is
worth noting that other programs to boost access to higher
education are being left out of current budget plans, even though
they have already been approved.
A “dual admissions” program would provide access to
higher education for thousands of students across the state who
graduate at the top of their high school classes, but don’t
quite qualify for the UC, provided they first complete two years of
community college. Dual admissions has been passed by the state
legislature and approved by the UC Board of Regents, but never
funded by the state, and, therefore, not implemented.
Outreach programs, meanwhile, are on the chopping block. A UC
committee established to evaluate the university’s outreach
programs said at a regents meeting last week such efforts have done
well to increase diversity since the end of affirmative action at
the UC, but also warned they were too narrow in scope. The chairman
of the committee spoke of an “unacceptable gap” between
the learning opportunities of blacks and Latinos compared to whites
and Asians, saying better outreach could help close this gap. But
instead, the May revisions call for outreach to be cut in half,
after they endured a similar cut last year.
The largest threat of all is that the budget does not allocate
the university enough money, so that the regents will likely raise
student fees by as much as 35 percent.
And no matter what current budget drafts include, if the last
two years are an indicator, the budget will be late, passed after a
messy partisan struggle. Last year, Republicans and Democrats could
not even come together to approve an emergency spending bill to get
students their state-funded financial aid to cover housing and book
expenses.
That Davis has already included the spending for the
reserves/National Guard bill shows the state is dedicated to
helping a small group of people who deserve a break on education.
But the bill does not widely address the issue of access to
education ““ a cause not as easy for a politician to support
as “patriotically” rewarding military personnel.
Until the state gets serious about other avenues of access, many
graduating high schoolers from underrepresented socio-economic
groups will choose to go through the military so they can afford
college, taking a life detour and, perhaps, risking their
lives.