Why I did not March to the Capitol

Today I could have gone to Denver to march with fellow Colorado students in a peaceful demonstration against higher education budget cuts.  I was looking forward to marching with them, but I couldn't justify skipping my classes today.  By skipping them, I would be defeating the purpose of paying for my classes.  It would be like buying an expensive lunch, and then leaving the lunch uneaten to visit corporate headquarters to protest the cost of the lunch.  It just seems silly.  I knew how much tuition was going to be at UCCS.  If I wanted free or cheaper tuition, I could have joined the military or moved to another state.  

Our nation's President said: "No one should go broke because they chose to go to college."  Well, I chose to go to college and I am broke.  So much for that ideal.  Mr. President, what happened to the American Opportunity Tax Credit?  It was one of the ways you persuaded the young people to vote for you.  I didn't vote for you but I loved that idea, and would be pleased to volunteer my time to the community in return for a little tuition.  I don't expect a free ride, I just want to feel confident that earning a degree will benefit me enough that I can afford to pay back these outrageous student loans.  Even a little tuition credit for volunteer work would mean less loans for me.

I am getting some help.  I am very thankful for the College Opportunity Fund (COF) that emerged while I was a student at Pikes Peak Community College.  The COF discounts undergraduate tuition by about 25%.  I have 145 discounted credit hours from our state trust fund, just about enough hours for a Bachelor's degree - and I will use every last hour.  I am sending out a big THANK YOU letter to the Colorado Legislature for giving us the COF.  Every little bit helps! 

Yet, Colorado is last in the nation for higher education funding.  Why?  The voters have spoken, the budgets have been cut, and the deficit has been passed on to the students.  Colorado voters have a history of denying tax-hikes, even when it meant that our state could not host the 1976 Winter Olympic games, an event that might have brought additional income to the city, or might not have, I don't know.  As a Colorado native, I share the limited-tax idea, and have always voted against big government spending projects.  However, Colorado is one of the fasted growing states in the nation, and our public services cannot possibly serve everyone without raising the budget.... right? Or is something else going on here?

I am repeating this photo from a previous post because I think it is a good illustration for this article.  These cardboard gravestones were standing in the grass in front of the bran-new Science and Engineering Building (SENG), built to modern standards of efficiency just last year.  Our state-of-the-art Kraemer Family Library appears in the background as the building with the clock tower.  I altered this photo with a gloomy tint to match it's message of doom.  The SENG replaced a parking lot, as did the new Recreation Center not far away.  Parking is something the university hopes to eliminate in the near future.

Instead of marching with fellow students to protest the high cost of higher education, I had some time between classes to think about my beliefs.  It is possible that the state legislature has less to do with the cost of education than we think.  The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is gearing up for tremendous growth in the near future.  This plan for growth includes a major budget increase. In the next several years, the university hopes to attract more "traditional" students (the ones who live on campus) by replacing the last remaining parking lots with dorms and apartment buildings.  The university will receive more income from "traditional" students than from their current student majority: the commuter or "non-traditional" students.

Money is what this article is about.  We all want more.

Regardless of who is responsible for the ever-rising cost of higher education, I can't help thinking that the protest in Denver today, although noble in its intentions, only served to demonstrate how great our sense of entitlement really is in America.  Click here to see protest photos published by the Denver Post.  Some of the students pictured are holding signs that make demands such as "Don't make this an idiot nation. Preserve our college funds!"

I know that our ideas are for sale.  Education is the most important thing we have to offer the world.  The United States of America is what we now call a Post-Industrial nation, meaning that our thoughts are more important than our labor.  We no longer have industrial jobs that were available to previous generations.  Students from all over the world come to study in the USA.  It is essential that more Americans become educated so that we can better compete in the global marketplace.  Institutions of higher learning are aware of this global trend, and are cashing in on it.  Instead of marching to the Capitol today, perhaps those students would have made a bigger statement by prying into the budgets of their colleges.  Why not ask what the deans' and regents' salaries are?  Why not look into the economics of university spending and write proposals and letters to department chairs?  Skipping class to stand around with signs and complain about the problem isn't going to change anything.