It took one year, with a typewriter and a bold vision, for the State of California to write and pass its 1960 (re)commitment of affordable, accessible, quality education for everybody — the California Master Plan for Higher Education. Today, 57 years later, that covenant to the people has been broken by the state. This comes after a long history started by then-Governor Ronald Reagan to slash the funding of higher education and expect individual students and families to take up the burden.
The people are this state’s most valuable asset, and we need to invest in their continued education. Education allows people to achieve their greatest potential and provides social mobility. Coming from an immigrant working class background myself, being exposed to the knowledge, resources, and network available at a UC campus multiplied my opportunity and potential in life. To put it in hard numbers, for every $1 spent on education, the state gets back $4.50 in new economic activity. That number is actually smaller than it should be; young people graduate college with so much debt, even after financial aid grants, they can’t even begin thinking of homeownership or even renting a place of their own. As a result of their decreased spending, our economy suffers.
As with all universally available programs, like Social Security and K-12 education, making higher education free for all is essential to its political longevity and public buy-in. Of course, it is not really free, though students wouldn't be paying anything extra to enroll and sign up for classes. Students must be expected to use their knowledge to benefit the public good, maintain decent grades, and make steady progress to graduate in four years. Through their employment, these college graduates will be paying taxes to support future generations, including their children. It doesn’t make sense to front load the entire cost of education and burden the individual when the collective benefits are so great.