These Students Are Leading a Movement for Free College in the United States - BY REBECCA NATHANSON

This post originally appeared at In These Times. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
-----------------------------
On Nov. 12, 2015, students at the University of California, Berkeley, redecorated their idyllic campus with a “wall of shame.” On pieces of paper taped to the administration building, students proclaimed how much debt they had assumed in order to attend the prestigious university — for some, more than $160,000. (Are they shaming themselves because of their poor financial decisions? I'm guessing not.)

With chants of, “Free college: That’s our right. What do we do? Fight, fight, fight,” the students called for an increasingly popular solution to the growing burden of student debt: abolishing tuition entirely at public colleges and universities. (Did you know that you had a right to free college? That is, free for them. These students want to force others to pay for their college.)

Throughout most of the 20th century, many public colleges and universities were free, or nearly so. (That is, before the progressivism of the 20th century, back when college had real value, admitted only the best, and produced some of the best minds ever seen in history.)

California’s landmark 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, for example, was essentially a pledge to educate all residents of the state who wanted an education for free or for a nominal fee. (If only they were getting educated as opposed to indoctrinated.)

But the plan was soon attacked by Gov. Ronald Reagan, who painted free public higher education as welfare for privileged twenty-somethings and began shifting costs to students when he took office in 1967. (Reagan, you were exactly right. And how little things have changed. We have a whole new generation of self-entitled, privileged twenty-somethings clamoring for free stuff.)

Today, the total cost of tuition and fees at the state’s public University of California campuses stands at $12,240 for in-state residents. (Less than $50,000 for a four year education. Not a small number, but not terrible, particularly for someone who chose to work part time to help with the costs. 

But remember up above where it is claimed that someone had $160,000 in college debt at the University of California, Berkeley? I'm having a bit of trouble reconciling the two numbers... And below the author will note the average college debt of graduates is $28,950.)

City University of New York (CUNY), likewise, didn’t begin charging tuition until 1976. It now costs $6,330 per year for in-state students, not including fees. ($6330 for a year? That's a bargain. What are these whiners complaining about?)

The idea of free higher education has gained new political life thanks in part to a high-profile champion. Sen. Bernie Sanders has made tuition-free college a signature issue of his presidential campaign, calling it the key to a “stronger economy and a stronger democracy.” (That is, Bernie is appealing to peoples' baser instincts to get something for nothing, and that they're entitled to things they did not earn.

And have you noticed that every spending plan advocated by leftists seems to always include a claim that it will strengthen the economy, that it makes economic sense, it's good for the country, or it's the moral thing to do? No evidence is ever cited for such claims, but given the thinking capacity manifested, these students wouldn't recognize a sound economic effect if it was camped out on their dorm room floor.)

Under Sanders’ plan, the federal government would cover the cost by imposing a financial transaction tax on Wall Street. (Ahh, so it's not free. It will be funded by a tax, paid by someone doing something completely unrelated to education. By that I mean it is like having your water heater quit and expecting George Clooney pay to replace it, simply because he has more money than you.)

Sanders has stressed that public universities are already tuition-free in Germany, Mexico and many other countries, and said in a June 2015 interview that he believed they could be in the United States, as well, if a million young people marched in the streets to demand it. (Give us free stuff! Right now! Because that economic juggernaut Mexico does it!)

Students rose to the challenge this fall, staging a Million Student March on Nov. 12, 2015 with demonstrations on more than 100 campuses. The protests centered on three demands: tuition-free public universities, a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers and cancellation of student debt. (What, no free beer? That's got to be a killer on a poor student's budget.)

In the past three decades, average tuition at US public universities has more than tripled. (Time to do the math. Sorry, I know it's hard, especially for a person who received a B.A. in history. Calculating the average annual increase is simple. The annual increase is 3.73%. By comparison, the inflation rate for the same period was 3.22%. Doesn't seem so outrageous anymore, does it?)

The money has gone to offset deep cuts in state funding, but also to fuel a ballooning of administrations and state-of-the art campus facilities. Given that students have borne the brunt of these changes — average student debt at college graduation grew from $18,550 in 2004 to $28,950 in 2014 — one might ask, why weren’t US students flooding the streets sooner? (Because they thought they needed a college education to compete in the job market, but then discovered that there were no jobs, thanks to stimuli and bailouts. And also, because it takes a socialist agitator to stir up discontent in the proletariat so that they would rise up against the bourgeois.

Again, let's look at the math. This is an increase of 4.552% per year.)

Places with far lower higher education costs have seen the rise of militant student movements opposing tuition hikes and privatization. (In other words, it isn't about the numbers at all, it's about some discontented crybabies who can't manage their lives or finances expecting others to bail them out for no other reason that they feel entitled.)

In 2012, tens of thousands of students in Québec, Canada, boycotted classes and took to the streets in response to a proposal to raise university tuition. A province-wide student strike lasted more than 100 days — the longest in Québec’s history — and won a tuition freeze. Beginning in 2011, Chilean students held two years of mass protests, organizing hundreds of thousands of students through the Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile, a national coalition of student unions. In January 2015, the Chilean Congress passed a landmark law prohibiting state-subsidized schools and universities from operating as for-profits, but protesters continue to demand free education for all.

However, both Québec and Chile had long histories of student activism around affordable education, with coalitions that could mobilize students quickly across campuses. While US colleges have historically been key battlegrounds for a range of social issues — sexual violence, international human rights, environmental justice and most recently, racial justice — they lack the same tradition of student unionism. Organizing across geographically disparate campuses also presents a hurdle.

But student organizers from New York to California are rising to the challenge, led by CUNY and UC students who want to revive their schools’ missions to provide universal access to education. “Being able to build student power system-wide and even statewide is the place to start,” says Art Motta, a senior at UC Santa Cruz. The Million Student March was the first nationwide action; organizers came together from activist groups across the country via Facebook and conference calls. They are considering a follow-up in the spring. Although most organizing takes place on the campus or at the statewide level, there are a handful of national student organizations with members or chapters throughout the country. The largest, United States Student Association, focuses primarily on using its extensive network to push for legislative change, rather than mass direct actions.

Politicians are beginning to take notice of growing public support for the idea: Though she opposes Sanders’ plan for tuition-free college, Hillary Clinton has a $350 billion plan to reduce debt in higher education by cutting costs at public universities and expanding income-based loan repayment, among other measures. Clinton has also endorsed tuition-free community college, a proposal that is currently being pursued by President Obama, based on a policy in Tennessee.
 And by joining forces with workers demanding a $15 minimum wage, students may be able to draw on the power of the labor movement. At the UC Berkeley march for tuition-free college, members of the California Nurses Association showed up in the hundreds to lend support.

To truly make higher education accessible to all, any plan will have to address not only its cost, but its history of segregation and exclusion of students of color, notes Daisy Villalobos, a junior at CUNY’s Hunter College. The two issues are far from separate: 42 percent of African-American families had student loans in 2013, compared to 24 percent of white families. And the debt protests have coincided with a wave of student protests highlighting other ways that institutional racism functions on campus. While the two student movements have only just begun to articulate their links, some campuses included racial justice in their Million Student March demands.

“I do believe that a student movement is growing,” Villalobos says. “But I think it’s going to have to be about changing what higher education looks like in America to better fit our needs as a nation.”