Passage 3 States of Crises
加利福尼亞州學(xué)費(fèi)危機(jī) 《新聞周刊》
[00:07]Whether you're an oppressive foreign dictatorship
[00:10]or an American state in the process of committing fiscal suicide,
[00:14]you know you're losing the public relations battle
[00:17]when encounters between armor-clad riot police with truncheons
[00:22]and college students are broadcast on TV.
[00:26]That's the sad situation California found itself in last week,
[00:30]after the University of California Board
[00:33]of Regents announced a staggering 32 percent midsemester tuition hike.
[00:41]Students responded by demonstrating,chanting,and occupying administration buildings.
[00:48]Things got unruly, law enforcement was called,
[00:52]and within hours it was every spin doctor's nightmare,
[00:56]replayed endlessly on cable news.
[01:00]As is often the case, California is leading a national trend.
[01:05]Higher education is becoming less affordable across the country every year.
[01:11]If states and universities don't make major structural changes in the way they operate,
[01:18]anger and frustration could start to boil over nationwide.
[01:23]The UC tuition crisis is a symptom of the larger collapse of governance in the Golden State.
[01:30]It takes two thirds of both houses in the state General Assembly to raise taxes,
[01:37]while new spending programs can be created by public referendum.
[01:43]Tax dollars are too hard to raise and too easy to spend,
[01:48]leaving the state lurching from one budget crisis to the next.
[01:52]The young men and women rushing to the barricades on UC campuses are Ronald Reagan's children,
[01:59]victims of a failed antigovernment movement that managed to turn people against taxes
[02:05]while leaving their appetite for public services unchecked.
[02:12]The pattern has been repeated in state after state over the past 30 years,
[02:17]even in places that raise and spend money in a normal way. Every time a recession hits,
[02:26]tax-frightened state legislators raise revenue by cutting university budgets disproportionately
[02:34]and allowing tuition to make up the difference, a back-door levy that hits poor
[02:39]and middle-class students the hardest. New York State, for example,
[02:44]is following California's lead with severe cuts to its public universities.
[02:51]A recent report from the College Board shows the price of college
[02:55]is growing faster than family income,
[02:58]GDP, and even the health-care costs that are threatening to break the public treasury.
[03:05]And those numbers were compiled before the huge price hikes in California and elsewhere.
[03:11]As a result, more students are borrowing more money for college than ever before,
[03:17]and loan default rates have increased sharply in just the last two years.
[03:23]Increasingly, low-income students are getting priced out of four-year universities
[03:28]and forced into lower-cost community colleges-or out of higher education altogether.
