Could California Offer Debt-Free College?
The Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted in the postwar golden year of 1960, reaffirmed California’s “commitment to the principle of tuition-free education to residents of the state,” according to a summary. A generation later, in 1978, Californians began to pull the plug on financing education, a result of the property tax cap known as Proposition 13. And now it costs more than the median individual income in L.A. County… This week, the effort to lower the cost burden for students continued as members of the state Assembly budget and higher education committees announced “Degrees Not Debt” legislation. The proposal would give students one year of free community college, preserve so-called Middle Class Scholarships and provide resources for students’ living costs, which often can outweigh tuition and fees in housing-crisis markets like Los Angeles.
Read full article [here].
by Dennis Romero, LA Weekly.