Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere.
California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public higher education system in the world: “California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot.”
Similar defunding is under way nationwide. “In most states,” The New York Times reports, “it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget,” so that “the era of affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over.”
Community colleges increasingly face similar prospects – and the shortfalls extend to grades K-12.
One thought on “The Assault on Public Education”
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Some of the responses to this article are even more strongly worded, and certainly, many are more amusing. This is a good article again, but it is also, again, opinion backed up by little research and no plan for improving the situation. What can we do to stop it when much of the attack is funded by the top 1% of the population that holds anywhere from 25-40% of the resources (depending on whom you read)? I am not purposely being defeatist; I actually mean: “What can we do?”