Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe?

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Campus Progress / By Simeon Talley

Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe?
While London has been rocked by student protests over proposed tuition hikes, United States college campuses have been largely quiet. Why?

January 3, 2011 |


While London has been rocked by student protests over proposed tuition hikes, United States college campuses have been largely quiet. Tens of thousands of students in the UK have taken to the streets -- confronting police, storming the Conservative Party headquarters, even halting the motorcade of the British monarch Prince Charles.

In fact, all across Europe students are revolting. For months, Italian students have been protesting tuition cuts and budget reforms. Greek students have not responded kindly to IMF endorsed austerity measures. And proposed cuts to the pension system have driven French students, in typical fashion, apoplectic.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect asks: “But why are the U.K. crowds almost 500 times as robust as those in the U.S.? Why does the American movement to fight tuition hikes and funding cuts remain so anemic in comparison?”

And she answers her question: “In no small part, it's because privileged students at America's colleges and universities generally don't take the issue personally. Those who are politically active tend to set their sights on distant horizons—the poor in India, say, or the oppressed in Afghanistan.”

When the young and privileged take their “do-gooderism” abroad, they take a lot of the energy for local activism with them. Interesting rationale, but I don’t think it fully explains the discrepancy.

What best explains the dormancy on many college campuses is rooted in a national condition. The social value placed on universally accessible higher education has declined. College used to be dramatically less expensive because it was heavily subsidized by the state. The past few decades have seen “massive disinvestment”. In the accompanying time, the burden of financing higher education has shifted to the individual. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/149398/why_aren%27t_us_students_rioting_over_crazy_tuition_hikes_like_college_kids_in_europe/

Even the rumor that this happened brings down condemnation by the public and allegations of a smear.

Americans have no tolerance for the side effects of rioting. Instead of gaining sympathy it generates the opposite.

affects them. Or if they can be convinced that it does (see baggers, tea).

realize that they can't attend college.

the UK students won't have that problem.

vs public/state/community college. Some states cut more and some less, your free to pick and choose what you can or cannot afford.

"What good would it do?"

Protests are great for mobilizing people but they don't seem to change much.

Did a pretty good job of making their point last year. Just because the major media didn't pick it up and run with the story does not mean they didn't try.

I'm early 40s. The children of my generation are starting to go to or consider university. Their parents in the UK, me included, not only got free tuition but also a stipend. The US equivalent generation have parents who had to pay for college the same way they did - less for sure, but same way - a combination of own money, grants, loans etc. No change beyond inflation.

My UK nephews are mid-late 20s. They lost the stipend but only had to pay a nominal copay for tuition - 1000 GBP IIRC. The younger siblings of their generation starting uni are facing massively different fee scales. The US eqivalent generation with elder siblings in their mid 20s are paying not that much more for school, and again financing it the same way.

In short UK students about to enter university are facing revolutionary change from just a few years ago and a (true for once) paradigm shift from a generation ago. US students are facing nothing more shocking than overdone price inflation. Troubling maybe but evolutionary change not revolutionary change, garnering similarly differing responses.

1. Tuition increases happen more frequently here (just in smaller increments)

2. Even when students do protest at the local level, the legislatures don't give a f*&k and pass the increases anyway

Tuition:
UK: Free
US: You pay tuition
It's a right--if you get in. And then you usually get a good job.

Auxiliary costs:
UK: Stipend
US: You pay
You can't use your right if you have to work to live. And dropping the stipend while instituting tuition is a second kind of "tuition increase", one onerous when there's high unemployment.

Financial aid:
UK: None. Or all-encompassing.
US: Means tested grants, means-tested loans.
Nobody should graduate with debt, however well-off, phrased as "Nobody should be denied
an education because of limited means."

Insecurity:
UK: How will the poor and the privileged both get their educations? It's like changing cricket into baseball, all the rules change.
US: We know the drill. An increase in tuition means a slight quantitative change. It's like instituting the designed-hitter rule. Yeah, the game's changed, but it's just a small change.

University slots:
UK: Limited at top schools by government funding
There was the attempt last year, met by protests and near riots, to charge tuition and expand
enrollment at top schools.
US: Depends on schools ability to raise money
Demand-side program sizing yields "degree dilution": If the demand for Furbling majors doubles but the government only funds 25, the same as last year, you still get 25 Furbling majors and the Furbling degree maintains its value. In the US we do the same with medical student "slots" by restricting the numbers of residencies, and schools do it for science/engineering classes to some extent, but it's not the same.

Who's raising tuition?
UK: A government unpopular with most students.
US: A lot of different colleges; even if it's because of state-level funding cuts, the cuts are usually mediated by the university's budgeting practices. The tuition increases are caused by, but not mandated by, the government.
So protests are local or you wind up protesting at the state capitol even if they only account for part of the increase or the increase only accounts for part of the budget cut. If the government is divided between parties or the budget increases bipartisan--note that in the US these are parties which most students don't swoon over--the protests are muddled. They're "grass roots" in the sense that a progressive paid organizer usually organized them and not a conservative paid organizer.

There are cultural and political differences; the fees are raised in different places and occur in different contexts. If my school had raised fees--and it did, quite a bit--I'd wonder where to protest. On campus, with a strongly (D) chancellor? The Regents, a 50-50 split? The (D)-controlled state legislature? The (R)-controlled governor's mansion? Does it matter that the fees increased by more than the budget cuts because a lot of the increased fees went to fund aid for the lowest income 25% of students? The effect was different, as well: More grants and financial, although I had more loans in the end, anyway. And there had been no attempted increase the year before to increase enrollment caps by instituting some fees.

Your reply was very interesting and very thought provoking. I think some California students actually did protest tuition hikes. But, your response suggests that we may be comparing apples and oranges in attempting to compare UK and US student situations and outcomes. Perhaps if all things were equal, we would see more protests, but all things aren't equal.

This government has no compunction about shooting its best and brightest.

... know that being shot and killed as a completely plausible outcome. Plus, no matter if we're on the "right" side, there's an immediate smear campaign launched on ALL SIDES about how ungrateful and entitled we are, and bootstraps bootstraps (this comes from liberal and conservative parents alike).

Instead of saying, "Wait, why isn't the state supporting my schooling the way it used to?" they will blame high professors' salaries. They have bought the Koolaid that anyone in education making full-time wages with benefits is the problem. They don't "get" that many public universities people most of their intro classes with adjunct faculty earning peanuts per course with no benefits.

I just about sprayed water over the screen. If the kids think that, they are REALLY clueless. High paid admins- you betcha. High paid professors- not so much.

The parents are even WORSE. And our local rag ... "newspaper" ... feeds these myths. Periodically it will print stories citing the "average" faculty salary as $90,000. The paper "forgets" that this number is the average of a FULL professor, likely someone with 30 years of experience. And that leaves out ALL of the adjuncts earning peanuts.

Yep, the students AND their parents (at least at the public university where I work) are clueless about faculty salaries. And yep, our administrators makes LOTS o' money, and amazingly they keep adding to their numbers while cutting faculty lines to "save money."

Sorry about your computer screen.