Why don't wealthy students protest tuition hikes?

nick_scheu
Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:58:00 +0000

^That won’t and shouldn’t happen. The idea behind in-state tuition is that the parents of students who grew up in California have been paying taxes for 18 years, contributing to the system, and are more likely to stay in California since they grew up here. Obviously no one could police such a system, but that’s the theory.

That said, it has been weakened in the past decade or so by things like AB540, which provides in-state tuition for all students who graduated from a California high school, regardless of citizenship, legal status, or likelihood to remain in California. In-state tuition has become more of a financial aid program than a discount for residents committed to California, if that makes sense.

I don’t want to get into a discussion of AB540, the DREAM Act, or illegal immigration. My point is that in-state tuition should only be given to students who have been citizens or legal residents of California for, say, the last 10 years, if it’s going to exist at all. Otherwise, it’s just a means to lower tuition for an additional class of people. You can argue that anyone and everyone should receive public financial aid, but I think it misses the point to give “in-state” tuition to students who are relative newcomers or do not have legal status, for whatever reason. Mine is as much a semantical argument as anything.