Students Protest City/State College Tuition Hikes
College Students Protest CUNY Tuition Hikes, Professors Join In
October 5, 2011The Blaze - Students at John Jay College in New York City used the sensationalism of the Occupy Wall Street protests to help build support on the street for their own demonstration. And they even got the teachers to join in.
Tuition hikes have long been a thorn in the side of CUNY and SUNY — the city and state college networks for New York — students and it is common place to see signs donning “No Cuts to CUNY” in campus halls. While walk-outs had been proposed in the past, they never had enough support to be fully realized.
That changed Wednesday when, after a week of strong promotion on Facebook and piggy-backing on the Occupy Wall Street movement, John Jay students had the success they hoped for when a protest that previously expected about 100 people grew to well over three times the expected amount.
The students’ signs showed the influence of the Occupy Wall St. movement, with many claiming the students were in the “99 percent:”
But students were not alone in their protest of tuition hikes and the possibility that the college could be privatized. Professors joined the spirited demonstration as well.
One female professor, who would not provide her name, held up a sign reading:
“You will not destroy my student’s dream. John Jay in Resistance!”Another teacher, well-liked by students, Prof. Richard Curtis who heads John Jay’s anthropology department, passionately declared to over 300 students,
”We believe that a college education is a right! Not a privilege of the rich.”He went on to say,
“We are done paying for rich people to be lazy and fat… our opportunity is being squandered by idiots! Let’s take it back from them:”
Flashback: New York Suny Colleges No Longer Hiring New Professors
July 28, 2008Associated Content - Up against budget cuts for the third year in a row, New York States SUNY (State Universities) and CUNY (City University) colleges are being forced to shut down programs, increase class sizes, and reduce on repairs and purchases.
The colleges are now facing budget cuts of 29 and 39 million dollars respectively. While none of the colleges plan on laying off professors, they say that they will not be able to hire new people to take the place of retiring professors. For the present, colleges are amply staffed but there is no question that in a few years as more professors retire the effects of the budget cut will prove to be disastrous.
Currently colleges are forced to cut back on purchases ranging from paper to pens to new computers. Instead these costs and others are being thrust upon students with already tight budgets.
As public college tuition and extra costs begin to mount, students are having an increasingly difficult time paying for college. This sordid state of affairs is bound to decrease the quality of our children's education as well as the number of young adults who make the decision to attend college and get an extensive education.
State University Of New York Salary
- Low
- 34,000
- Average
- 75,474
- Median
- 63,142
- High
- 235,000
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