#fee hikes

[translatingtheprintempserable]

Welcome to 2015 – Year 2 of Austerity! (Le Journal de Montréal)

By Josée Legault Originally published on: January 4, 2015 See original French version here: http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/01/04/bienvenue-a-2015—lan-deux-de-lausterite 

You may have missed it while you were 1) busy scraping ice, or 2) recovering from the holidays, but in Québec, 2015 will greet us with a pile of fee hikes.

Fees that only add to, it goes without saying, those of the past…

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Le debut de la manifestation, UC Berkeley, le 24 novembre 2014

itsonlikecelinedion.tumblr.com

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It would be hard to make this shit up.

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An email I received regarding proposed new fees for Fresno State students:

SQE will be meeting with President Welty Wednesday, November 7  at 2:30PM to dicuss upcoming fees that may affect many of us!!! Read below for more information! Feel free to email me if you are interested in getting involved. We also need students who are willing to give testimonies on how these decisions will affect them!  

-neama 

A MESSAGE FROM STUDENTS FOR QUALITY EDUCATION:  

As you may have heard, next week the CSU Board of Trustees will be voting on whether or not to pass newly proposed student fees. These fees will be as follows:

-Students with more than 150 units will be charged an extra $372 PER UNIT

-Students wanting to take more than 16 units a semester will have to pay an extra $200 PER UNIT

-Students needing to retake a course will have to pay an extra $100 PER UNIT

The Board of Trustees has said that these fees are being put in place to stop students from "gaming" the system. They believe that students stay in the CSU system for longer than 4 years because they do not wish to graduate in time. Not because we are required to take heavy class loads, work as we go to school, or have double majors. These fees will hurt students that work, have children, or have other extenuating circumstances. THESE FEES ARE SIMPLY UNFAIR.

But these fees have only been proposed. They have not passed yet. We can still stop them. On Nov. 13th our president Welty will be going to the meeting, and we want him to voice our opinion, and show that students are AGAINST THESE FEES. 

SQE is forming a delegation to meet with Pres. Welty this Wednesday. Meet us at out table on the Maple Mall near the campus Taco Bell at 2:00pm. From there we will walk to president Welty's office together. Please invite any students who may be interested in helping out. We need to show Pres. Welty that students do not want these fees and that we are not "gaming" the system.

If you go to Fresno State, and even if you don't but can attend the meeting, please keep it in mind. Despite the passing of proposition 30, the schools (probably the UC and CSU systems in general) are going to continue to try raising fees as much as possible, as if the fact that my tuition will have just about doubled next semester from where it was when I started in the fall of 2010 wasn't enough.

Why did I go to college?

[ltltrb]

A protest a day keeps the revolutionaries at bay?

Last week, the Middle East was once again in the center of media attention as protests broke out throughout the region against a lo-budget film that derided the Prophet Muhammed. What began as a protest at the US embassy in Cairo last Tuesday developed into a formal call by the Muslim Brotherhood for peaceful protests after prayer on Friday. Unfortunately, things did not remain peaceful and clashes broke out between protesters and the police, involving several casualties in the US embassies and protesters of many different cities.

It is definitely interesting to be living here while this is all happening. The news reported the center of the action with images of homemade bombs being thrown at police and tear gas being fired back at protesters. Some Europeans even told me that newspapers at back home were reporting that Cairo was on fire. As for me...I woke up on the day of the first protest completely oblivious, went to Khan al Khalili (post about this will come soon), came home, and read about it online. I proceeded to receive a slew of warning emails telling me which areas to avoid, but continued with life as usual without much disturbance. In Zamalek where I live, I think it would be fair to say that you could have no idea that any type of protest was going all, save what you see in the dormitory lobby television and Facebook. However, this is not to say that the protest was absent in Cairo by any means. I heard of a few curious internationals who headed in the direction of the protest and were warned by Egyptians to turn back-- sometimes politely, sometimes not so politely. 

To provide some background on the perception of foreigners in the Middle East (ahem, collar adjustment), the West has been a presence in Middle Eastern politics in a major way for a very long time now. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Western nations have tried to get a foot in the region mostly for their own foreign interests. Even the formation of many modern Middle Eastern countries and their boundary lines have been arbitrarily decided upon by Western nations who haven't always had the local populations best interests in mind (understatement). As a result, the Middle East has frequently been embittered towards the presence of the west in trying to control its politics and economy, especially after having their trust betrayed in many-a-treaty. This point is definitely driven home to me as I take Middle Eastern politics at AUC and get a slightly more passionate perspective on the West's treatment of the region from Middle Eastern professors and students. Its fun stuff. 

Obviously, this isn't a history blog, but it is MY blog, and you are therefore entitled to MY opinion. Haha, just kidding. But in all seriousness, an of understanding what has happened in the past in this region will definitely help to make a lot more sense out of the protests and different things that I encounter here and might be posting about.

In a nutshell, foreigners are basically very very discouraged from attending or participating in any protests because it is seen as Egyptian business where foreigners shouldn't be meddling with their country's affairs. 

Well, I didn't warn you, but this is a long post. It really didn't start out this way, but then I had to give a history lesson out of obligation to myself and whatnot...

Anyway, the anti-muslim video protests did eventually end as the situation in Tahrir stabilized. Everything was fine and dandy until I arrived to campus at 7:40 this morning.

My friend shook me awake from the bus ride. I was a little confused as to why we were being let off outside of the school gate rather than the parking lot. I soon found myself, along with dozens of other students, locked outside of AUC because a group of students were blocking the entrance to the school in protest of the 7% fee hikes that were to take place in three consecutive years (21% in total, painful). The international students looked in bewilderment as a passionate young man stood on a car and shouted about student's rights. Some agreed with him, some complained about having to go to the bathroom. At the end of the day, I guess that is what happens when you build a school that is walled all around with limited entrances and the security guards decide to cooperate with the students in protest to block the gate. This continued on for about an hour as more buses arrived with more students and eventually the local students also began to pull in to the driveway. By 9:30, there was a crowd of 300 or more students outside of the AUC gate with the marvelous desert sun beating on their brows.

My favorite part was row of Americans huddled in the thing sliver of shade next to the main wall, yours truly included. Eventually, we heard somewhere that classes were cancelled and hopped in taxis back home (the buses weren't running).

Honestly, it was pretty interesting to be part of something like that. Back home, I must admit that I am a pretty apathetic school rights participant- for some reason, it hardly feels like students are unified in a campus as large as UCSD. But, being gathered in a large crowd where students are passionately fighting for something was pretty cool, even if most of the students here are the 1% of Egypt who probably can afford a decently summed education. 

(photo cred : Egypt Independent)

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"Striking" today.

I'm really just being a lazy-ass and finishing up work I should have done over the weekend. I've been doing it, but it's just refused to allow me to finish it.

But really, I wish I knew of more "revolutionary" stuff going on at Fresno State, today and every day. Our tuition keeps climbing higher and higher, the administration still makes an absolutely sickening amount of money, units are now capped at 16 so most of us won't be able to graduate in the time-frame we had planned, GE classes like math take place in huge halls and have about 200 students per section, there are literally only two or three sections of Political Science 2 every semester (which is the only political science GE course, which means that every single student is required to take it), they've spent a bunch of money on a "rebranding" campaign that basically ended with a boring new logo that's not very different from the old one, the Save Mart Center fucking exists, the school isn't accepting new students, it's very likely that the student health center fee will go up next year...

I've got a lot to be pissed about. The entire student body does. Much of the staff does, too, really. I know college is a business these days, but at this point, I feel like I might as well have gone to a private school. I'll be paying private school prices by the time I finally get my BA at this rate, anyway. I've been at State for four semesters (going into my fifth) and there have been two fee-hikes enacted and a third approved (if I remember correctly). BULL FUCKING SHIT.

[teachingtotransform-blog]

"The plan approved this week by the governing board, SMC could charge $200 per unit for popular classes like English and math, according to the LA Times. Currently, fees are $36 per unit, set by the Legislature for California community college students."

[roohafsa]

That situation - higher costs, lower quality - has created a weird love-hate relationship between the US public and the academy. More than ever, higher education is perceived as crucial for both national and individual success, yet its apparent inability to deliver the goods occasions considerable hand wringing, as well as demands for accountability.

Ellen Schrecker for Al-Jazeera

Is the higher education sector, much like the housing bubble, an inflation that will soon burst? My DePaul University diploma sits on my bookshelf, almost taunting me now. How much is it ever worth to learn something?