Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Editorial: Students and financial adversities
No
Money, Plenty More Problems
The
life of a college student is usually characterized by budget living. Food costs money. Books cost money. Printing at the library costs money.
What
is different today from the previous generation: a college degree is more
essential to financial security more than ever, loans are the primary financial
aid for most college students, and the elimination of retirement pensions to
measly 401(k) retirement savings accounts.
The Occupy Wall Street movement highlighted the other financial crisis—educated graduates burdened with loans and an economy in which jobs are endangered species.
The Occupy Wall Street movement highlighted the other financial crisis—educated graduates burdened with loans and an economy in which jobs are endangered species.
The
journey of completing higher education starts with a single step; for nearly 70 percent of California students, it starts at the
community college. In 2007, 55 percent of California State University and 30 percent of University of California baccalaureates
were awarded to community college students who transferred, according to the
California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott.
Watch
for Summer 2012 for higher tuition for the fee to go up from $36 to $46 “if
state revenues fall more than $1 billion below projections and trigger cuts are
executed” according to Chancellor Scott.
Investing
into community colleges will alleviate the state budget crisis: “For every $1 California spends on higher
education, it receives $3 in return. If
just 2 percent more of Californians earned associate degrees
and 1 percent more earned a bachelor’s degree, our state’s
economy would grow by $20 billion, state and local tax revenue would increase
by $1.2 billion a year and 174,000 new jobs would be created.” Chancellor Scott
stated.
Reflecting
on Gov. Jerry Brown’s current fiscal year’s budget, Scott estimated that up to
670,000 California students wanting to enroll in community colleges would be
denied access.
Kevin
Carey,
the policy director of the independent, nonpartisan think tank Education
Sector, credited the Occupy Wall Street movement for coercing, even President
Obama to address the problem of hefty loans for students: “The students in Zuccotti Park are right to focus on the injustices of student debt: Many of them are indentured to the very banks that destroyed the economy.” Furthermore, Carey points out that student
loans are soaring much faster and higher than credit card debt; a report from
CQ Researcher estimated the amount exceeding $830 billion. Unlike other types of debt, student loans
cannot be forgiven by declaring bankruptcy.
President
Obama’s Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act pledged $40 billion for
Pell grants which primarily benefit low-income students, “$2 billion over four
years for community colleges” and limit student loan payments to 10 percent of
income effective 2014.
Financial
crises aside, most students are far too busy to educate themselves on financial
literacy. Credit card companies eagerly
target college students recognized with the legal status of consenting adults. Credit card companies offering free pens and
hats set up shop near the Cub Bookstore and the Quad with clipboards. Decisions made while at age 18 will
continue to haunt until they are repaid.
Debts establish credit history.
In
such a sink-or-swim situation, City College students must teach themselves
financial literacy more than ever. Few
years ago, financial guru Suze Orman came up with “The Money Book for the
Young, Fabulous, and Broke” (LACC Library call number 332.024 Or5m). Many rules have changed from the previous
generation, especially predatory credit card companies targeting college
students and the disturbing trend of loans making up the bulk of financial aid
packages.
To
My Fellow Fabulously Broke City College students: If you have a student loan or
a credit card, please check your credit report every year to monitor for
identity theft and inaccuracies. By
state law, every Californian is entitled to free credit reports every year from
the three credit bureaus from AnnualCreditReport.com. Those fortunate enough to work should invest
in a 401(k) (assuming the employer still offers it). The Los Angeles Public
Library has books and audio books available to download; search the catalog
using the subject term “Finance, Personal.”
Knowledge is power: financial literacy is the
knowledge to be free from a lifetime of being broke.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Editorial: Community colleges
No Child Left Behind: The Community College Edition
Every
student who completes a federal financial aid application has to look
at the dismal City College completion and graduation rates, extracted
from the National Center for Education Statistics.
In
2010, only ten percent of entering students were counted as full time.
The retention rate for full time students was sixty-one percent but
thirty-five percent for part time students. Only fifteen percent
graduated with degrees or certificates. Only twelve percent of LACC students transferred to universities.
In
order to boost the numbers, a statewide organization known as the
California Community Colleges Student Success Task Force is gearing up
for reform to boost graduation and transfer rates.
How do you boost numbers?
Get
rid of the weakest link—part time students who struggle with work and
family duties. They have obligations that compete with school.
The
Task Force intends to prioritize fee waivers for full time students to
ensure that their degrees are completed within “normal” time. For an
associate degree, three years is the maximum period of “normal” to
complete that study.
Proponents
of the task force have described their goals as ensuring
accountability. In a financial crisis, how can the state continue to
invest in “lazy” students who don't bother with their classes? The
state should allocate its funds to the more “motivated” full time
students, the Task Force recommends.
Community colleges have been known for its access. The community college system in California is the largest in the nation.
To register for City College takes seconds whereas getting into UCLA takes months of preparations.
Should higher education really be available to everyone who desires it?
The
resources and finances at community colleges are bleeding. The Task
Force argues that resources must be “rationed.” Full time students
should receive fee waivers and priority registrations. The safe
investments are the students who are progressing at “normal” time,
whereas, students who are progressing slower would be considered riskier
investments. When degrees are not achieved in “normal” time, the
figures make City College look like a campus of idiots and dilettantes.
Vigorous
opponents from San Francisco City College have argued that getting rid
of noncredit courses and a prioritization for full time students as
privatization.
The
retention and graduation figures don't tell the full story. They don’t
reveal students who are at City to learn for the sake of learning, to
dabble into a new field, to retrain, to get their feet wet into an area
that they had always desired but pursued another major field because of
parental pressures.
But government likes numbers. The percentages are too low. Make 'em higher by kicking out the ones who bring down the numbers?
Learners
exploring their desires need not apply. Financial aid will be tied to
grades and “normal” pace of progress towards degrees and transferring.
The Task Force intends to build a transfer powerhouse with numbers to
show off.
Community
colleges have always been seen as the one accessible oasis to the
population with the harshest adversities: minorities, first generation
college students, low income, working-class.
Students
who want to explore and slow pokes who stick around City College beyond
three years—Sorry, my friends, the Task Force wants you out.
 |
| Illustration by Jose Tobar |
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Opinion: Healthcare
Staying Alive – price tag $11,000,
Death – priceless
I was at the store looking for a magazine at the rack, feeling breathless and dizzy. Maybe there was a power outage, I thought, because the lights were going off.
When I woke from what felt like a deep sleep, I heard a voice speak in an authoritative tone: “You’ve just had a seizure. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”
I couldn’t be certain if I was dreaming a strange delusion inspired by a television episode of ER.
“Can you tell me what today’s date is?” he asked.
I diligently ravaged my brain but I drew a blank.
Ashamed, I frowned and I pathetically shook my head.
“That’s ok,” said the paramedic. More people hovered around me with tubes.
I then realized my head was on the floor and these people were looking down at me. I tried to remember the circumstances preceding to my laying on the floor.
He injected my right arm with painful ivies to take my vital signs.
“You can hold my hand,” said a concerned female bystander.
He then confirmed that they were going to take me to the “UCLA hospital.”
‘Oh no,’ I thought, ‘not the Neiman Marcus of hospitals!’
I was quickly transported to the garage. I heard the sirens. A group of emergency room doctors in white coats and nurses in navy blue scrubs hovered over me.
Business first. The Admissions counselor remained stoic in her countenance and handed me a pink Faustian form consenting to medical care, which is the same as consenting to medical debt.
“I can’t afford it,” I shook my head.
“You might as well,” she said, “you’re already here.”
I currently owe the City of Culver City $1,860 for ambulance services and $11,000 to the UCLA Ronald Reagan hospital.
Advertised as “ a public health insurance program which provides needed health care services for low-income individuals”, Medi-Cal is what a social worker will advise if you are low income and need medical care. Unfortunately, even though I am low-income, I do not quality because the eligibility requirements are so restrictive; as an individual who is not on welfare, I must be pregnant, younger than 21 or older than 65 to qualify.
I am in the process of submitting my charity application, my only resort. I am unable to pay my medical bills. I currently work as a temp, making $13 an hour, which yields a gross income too high for welfare. I have been described as a hard worker. In addition to my day job, I have tried to make ends meet by working in various second jobs as a teaching assistant and as a tutor.
*
While attending college, my father was hospitalized. He also faced collection notices and bills with dizzying rows of zeroes and commas, huge sums of money that we did not have.
I am lucky. Although I know the price tag of staying alive, the quality (yet extravagantly) comprehensive treatment at UCLA Ronald Reagan hospital ruled out any terminal illness as a cause for the seizure.
But I still struggle to work, to save money, and I watch my father die.
Medi-Cal, the supposed state progtam for the low income, restricts eligibility to such a tiny portion of the population with insanely arbitrary age restrictions. What about men who are sixty-four years old like my father?
He has a catheter attached to his leg because of his bladder problems. I was hoping to save my money so that he could see a urologist but I now face my own bills. Will he live long enough for Medicare?
When I was five, my father and I immigrated to America, the land of opportunity. His withering health makes a mockery of the treasured value we held as newly immigrated Americans.
I know that I am not the only American daughter watching her father die and sink into debt that I will never be able to pay off.
In desperation, I have even considered sending my father as a medical tourist to Korea where universal healthcare is offered. Unfortunately, he is in no condition to get on a plane.
We both work hard and we both pay taxes as legal residents who pay our fair share.
The State of California has programs for minors, children, and pregnant women. But what about the non-pregnant?
As a graduate of UCLA, I am even more frustrated and ashamed that I couldn't wade through the system to get healthcare for my father. His social security disability application was rejected even though his income was cut more than half since his hospitalization.
My father and I have both realized the cost of staying alive, which is far higher than dying. Are lives devalued so much to the point that a cost-benefit analysis would point to death as the more affordable option?
Los Angeles City Collegian – Issue 2 – 3/5/12
Editorial: Student Success Task Force
Extreme Makeover: City College Edition
Show me progress toward your degree or leave. The open admissions policy of LACC is about to be restricted, now becoming a thing of the past.
City College may soon implement the proposals listed in the Recommendations of the Student Success Task Force, which is on its way to the state Legislature.
In order to alleviate crowded classes in which every single seat is occupied and crashers sit on the floor, the Student Success Task Force has proposed radical changes to LACC.
Because of budget cuts and fewer course selections and offerings, some teachers have even resorted to lotteries.
In the new plan, students must show substantial progress toward their degree plans. Dilettantes, especially, will not be given BOG fee waivers.
Ten percent of entering City College students were counted as "full-time, first-time" in 2010, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In every semester and in every class, courses are filled beyond capacity at the beginning of the semester. By the middle of the semester, one should not be surprised to witness that half the students dropped out. By the end of the semester, the real survivors stand out like sediment left behind after the attrition.
The Task Force will prioritize first-time, incoming students. The Task Force is, in essence, dangling the carrot in front of students. Get your degrees they seem to say, get out, and make room for new students.
Because of the current budget climate, the Student Success Task Force has planned to ration out community college resources smarter, and in a manner that is fairer.
It’s about time that the precious resources of the state get invested in safer bets. Just as financial advisers inform their clients to stay away from risky hedge funds in a bear market, it’s time for community colleges to invest in safer choices like full-time students who are making progress toward their degrees.
An associate degree should not take longer than three years. It was meant to be completed in two.
The necessary funds to provide an open admissions policy, which offers classes to all like free manna fallen from the sky is a memory of the bull market days.
The Task Force recommendations make sense. After all, to transfer to the University of California, a City College student needs to have completed only 60 units. What is an LACC student doing still hanging out here after 110 units?
Everyone deserves an education. But dilettantes who drop out in the middle of the semester are taking up too many resources. They are not allowing 113,000 new students to register, which denies thousands of others who are worthy of an education.
Non-credit community extension courses, “learning for the sake of learning” fun classes, do not transfer, nor should they get subsidized in this bleeding economy.
BOG waivers cover at least 40 percent of community college students in the state.
Students with more than 110 units will no longer qualify for the BOG. The task force has argued that California needs workers who are educated, who have completed their certificates or degrees. One hundred and ten plus units that do not synthesize to a finished degree are 110 units wasted.
To view the community college as an all-you-can-enroll buffet is something the task force intends to end. No more exploring. No more tasting courses outside your major. No more dilly-dallying.
Some of the proposals are earth-shattering: “The community college system must shift from using historical course scheduling patterns and instead make informed course schedules focused on needs of students.”
One can only hope that more weekend, online, and evening courses are offered to accommodate self-supporting students with full-time jobs.
Remember the excitement when Obama was running for office, promising “change?” City College students who are sick of being pushed out of overcrowded classes and disappointed when they cannot enroll in courses necessary for their majors, can only hope for the task force to bring the promises of improvement to a depressing and frustrating squeeze.
Los Angeles City Collegian – Issue 3 - 3/26/12
Editorial: Santa Monica College’s Two-Tier Tuition Plan
Price Gouging a Public Good: Santa Monica College’s Two-Tier Scandal
Santa Monica College’s contentious plan to charge $200 per unit for in-demand courses this summer has been cancelled, according to spokesperson Bruce Smith after much controversy in the media and a public relations debacle in which protesting students were pepper sprayed.
All California community colleges are expected to raise fees this summer from $36 to $46 a unit. The Trustees of Santa Monica College voted to offer unsubsidized course offerings in which all fees would be paid out of the students’ pockets. These unsubsidized $200 a unit courses would be available for registration only after all the slots for $46 a unit courses have been filled to capacity.
Thanks to the budget crisis and an increase of students and a decrease of course offerings, LACC students have had to commute to other colleges such as SMC in order to get the courses they need.
Santa Monica College is known as a leader in preparing transfer-ready undergraduates to UCLA. You can bet that the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District were watching SMC closely to see if a similar plan could be implemented at City.
The essential interaction of supply and demand would dominate if education were a commodity. More demand leads to higher prices.
Because of the high demand and lack of “supply,” there is some selective processing to select students deemed “fit” that will most likely stay and complete the finals with satisfactory grades.
Some might even believe that the raised fees at SMC are rather natural as laissez-faire.
The trustees at Santa Monica College who voted for the two-tier tuition plan were shocked—SHOCKED— at the national attention. SMC students like student government President Harrison Willis characterized it as an egregious exclusion of needy students.
After the SMC Trustees passed the two-tier plan, Jack Scott, Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, asked for Santa Monica College to wait until he received word from the state attorney general to advise on whether such a two-rate tuition would be legal. The attorney general informed Scott that the SMC plan to offer the same courses at different tuition rates appeared to violate the state education code.
The most interesting argument that the proponents bring up constantly is that a special scholarship $250,000 is to be established for the poor students who cannot afford those quadrupled inflated tuition rates.
Just as the price of gas goes up and up and up, education, when viewed as a high demand commodity, has a soaring price driven by high demand and strained supply.
“People know a good deal when they see it,” Santa Monica College faculty member Martin Goldstein wrote for the Los Angeles Times Blowback, which skillfully appropriated a modified “opportunity deferred, dream denied” argument.
Goldstein concluded that the option of offering “good public education” courses albeit at a higher unsubsidized rate is preferable to not offering the courses at all, which he called “lost opportunity costs.”
Is education, the essential catalyst to social mobility and the American Dream to get out of the nickel and dimed existence a public good or a high-priced commodity traded on Wall Street?
The two-tier plan was not new. A nearly identical proposal sponsored by Santa Monica College to offer transferable courses at unsubsidized rates had been introduced last year as Assembly Bill 515. It failed.
Unlike Universities of California or the California State Universities, California community colleges have held a tradition of open access. That idealism is about to be challenged in the current economic climate one college at a time.
4/16/12 – Los Angeles City Collegian – Issue 4
Opinion: "Post Racial"
Post Racial
I boarded the eastbound Slauson Boulevard bus on my way to City College.
On this particular day, I chose to suppress that little voice.
I went to the back of the bus to sit. I was the only Asian sitting there, amongst a group of black youths.
When Sandra Bullock’s character in the 2004 film “Crash” walked by those two black men, she too had a premonition.
I felt the burn of dark pupils. One black teen was eyeing me purposely from across the bus. I felt the gaze of another teen sitting to my left; he leaned over to yet another, whispering into his ear. I dismissed my apprehension: It was a full bus and crowded; and yes, maybe there weren’t too many people who looked like me boarding busses in South Central.
I looked down, continuing to read articles on Trayvon Martin, the seventeen-year-old who was killed by a half-white, half-Peruvian volunteer crime watchman in Florida.
Martin’s death is portrayed as a racist tragedy because he was a young black male. In the court of public opinion, most are probably on Martin’s side.
Suddenly, my reading was interrupted when my body was pulled off my seat. The guy who was eyeing me suspiciously had tugged on my purse, which pulled my wrist because the purse strap was around it. The next tug was enough to lift me like a rag doll.
As the bus stopped on Slauson and Crenshaw, I suddenly realized what was happening.
“Stop!” I shouted. I was able to get a closer look at those eyes which bore into me, surprisingly calm brown eyes, so focused. His objective was clear.
The purse snatcher pushed me out the rear doors of the bus. The exit stairs were behind me. I fell to the sidewalk. He and his friend ripped the strap from my purse and ran.
I watched in slow motion. The bystanders were thankfully not in as much of a daze as I was.
“Do you want me to call the police?” asked a woman.
“Go after them,” said a mother with a little girl dressed in pink.
My chest tightened painfully.
I couldn’t believe what was happening.
“They’re there!” the bystander pointed toward south Crenshaw Boulevard.
I had given up on my purse, but the bystanders prodded me. I walked slowly to comply with their instructions.
Moments later, a man returned on his bicycle after chasing my purse snatchers.
I recognized the small black bag, now strapless.
“Thank you,” I said to the man who returned my purse to me.
I collapsed to the ground because I was so utterly shocked. I had only $3 and a debit card that had access to the few remaining dollars in my checking account. I also had my driver’s license and a cellphone inside that purse.
“Get up,” he urged me, spurring my confidence.
I had never been a victim of a crime.
The boys who had snatched my purse resembled Trayvon Martin in appearance.
I had ignored that “little voice,” scolding myself with “Don’t be a racist.”
Here, I would like to stop my story to warn all Asians who take the bus on South Central to not sit in the back and be aware of teen black males who eye you suspiciously.
I was going to write an editorial about the plight of the young black male, including the most conspicuous statistic of how so few black men are in higher education.
“Don’t be a racist,” was the most important lesson from my memory of the Los Angeles Riots.
I want to get along. I want to live in that post-racial world.
I refused to believe that South Central was a rough neighborhood. I also wanted to do something about the prejudice toward young black males.
Now, I question myself.
The Slauson bus passes by the swapmeet where my father had worked. During the Los Angeles Riots, he was armed along with other Korean workers to guard his place of work. As the lone Asian on the Slauson bus, I am reminded just how segregated Los Angeles still is, so contrary to my idealism.
From now on, I will have an involuntary feeling of fear whenever I see a teenage black male with sagging pants. I don’t want to, but the fear will be there and that is the part I resent the most.
My story ended happily. There were people who helped me. They were all black and brown and they were all more than willing to help that lone Asian—me.
But a gnawing question persists which I want to ask the two teens who plotted to steal my purse: “Why me? Was it because of my race?”
 |
| Illustration by Jose Tobar |
@CollegianWired
Film Review: "Clash of Colors"
In the 20-year anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, a documentary is examines the self-destruction of an urban melting pot.
"Clash of Colors," a film by David D. Kim, a Korean-American lawyer who urged Koreans to defend themselves during the Los Angeles Riots, examines an American tragedy released on the 20-year anniversary of the Riots.
Similar to the “change and hope” of a black president running the most powerful country in the world, Los Angeles in the 1990s had a black mayor. Like the advent of the Riots, the economy is in a state of recession. A tension threatens with publicized stories like the black Florida teen’s death at the hands of crime watch volunteer.
“Clash,” which Kim began in 2003, tries to answer why a tragedy happened, resulting in 55 deaths and $1 billion in property damage. Most of the property damage was suffered by Korean Americans in the neighborhood, the group with the largest number of self-employed businesses.
However, the infamous video that sparked the Riots 20 years ago was due for a closer look. Rodney King was driving drunk and speeding. A group of white officers struggled to subdue King, a formidable man, before they pulled out their batons. This portion leading up to the video aired on television remains mostly unseen.
What aired on TV were the truncated versions of the Rodney King which created an expectation that the four white officers would be convicted.
The officers were acquitted of their beatings and the rage flared among the community.
It catapulted when the media reported on the death of Latasha Harlins, a black teen who had argued with a Korean liquor store owner, Soon Ja Do. After Harlins was accused of shoplifting, Do shot the black teen.
Do was also acquitted like the white officers involved with Rodney King. When Do’s sentence was reduced to community service, indignant rage from Rodney King trial exploded. Do’s liquor store was burned. Other Korean businesses were burned. Chaos ensued and television continued to play the edited video clips.
Security camera footage filmed Do and Harlins. However, the truncated clip broadcast on television only showed the Korean woman shooting the teenager and skipped the part in which the teen reached over the counter to slap the Korean merchant.
Calls to the police made by Koreans were made and ignored. The police did not come; the department advised Koreans to just abandon their businesses.
At first, the Radio Korea also advised Koreans to close up their businesses and stay home. Then David D. Kim went to Radio Korea and urged Koreans to arm themselves and defend their businesses.
"Koreans were pioneers," Leo Estrada, demographer and UCLA faculty professor said, "when nobody else wanted to invest in South Central LA, entrepreneurs from South Korea came into this area."
Koreans owned and operated many liquor stores in South Central, which was considered black territory. Black newspapers had front page headlines of Koreans taking over black neighborhoods.
Most people of Los Angeles are probably not aware that the familiar video clips of Rodney King and Latasha Harlins were shortened versions. The images of Rodney King and Latasha Harlins -- the frequency of images of blacks being attacked and then framed as racial conflicts was not truthful because most exchanges between blacks and Koreans did not result in conflicts. Unfortunately peace does not make headlines. The media provoked the riots by frequently airing only violent images.
The potential for another uprising is always there," said Estrada.
With rising poverty and discontent, the potential for conflict and scapegoating grows, especially, in a multicultural city. David D. Kim’s “Clash of Colors” urges remembrance and caution.
As the historian George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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| "Riot Riot" by Lauren Arévalo @laarevalo |
@CollegianWired
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