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Here’s an incredible statistic. Last year, the cost of a year in college — public college — rose to fifty-five percent of the median family income of families in the bottom 20% of earnings in the US.
You read that right. For the average family in the bottom 20% of American households, sending just one family member to college will eat up more than half of your total family income for the year.
But financial aid will help with that, right? Wrong. That figure is for net cost, after financial aid has been factored in.
After inflation, tuition and fees at American colleges and universities have risen 439% in the last twenty-five years, and students from lower-income families now receive less aid per student than their wealthier counterparts.
These numbers come from a new a report on college costs from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. As the president of the Center told the Times, these numbers are feeding a growing educational gap between the US and other countries we’re competing against in the global economy. “Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers,” he says, and the situation is likely to grow worse in years to come.
The full report is online here.
Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania is offering free tuition for “individuals who have recently become unemployed due to business or industry plant closing or layoff.”
The program, which has been implemented twice in the past, offers local residents 12 credits worth of classes in career programs, or up to $900 in free non-credit work-related classes.
(Thanks to Bill Shiebler of USSA for the heads-up.)
For Student Power has a meaty new post up on tactics and strategies for organizing around campus budgeting issues in this time of economic crisis. Check it out.
The student government of Carelton University in Ottawa, Canada has withdrawn from a national cystic fibrosis fundraising campaign on the grounds that the disease’s sufferers are too white and too male.
In a resolution, the student government declared that cystic fibrosis “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men.” (A representative of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation says both of these claims are false.)
Public comment on the decision was swift and harsh, with one columnist at the conservative National Post calling the resolution “a new low … even by the loopy standards of student governments.”
Students at Carelton have launched a drive to impeach the president of the student government, as well as a faculty adviser to the group the student government member who drafted the resolution.
December 3 Update: The Carelton student government has apologized for the resolution, and pledged to increase fundraising for cystic fibrosis. See our followup story here.
An IT administrator at Amherst College has posted a Harper’s Index style list of facts about the incoming class. Some fascinating stuff there with relevance for student organizing.
The relationship of college students to the internet has been transformed in the last few years. In 2003, 33% of Amherst applicants applied online. This year, 89% did. Of 438 first-year students this fall, just 14 brought desktop computers with them, and only 5 have landline phone service. (That’s five students, not five percent.)
On the other hand, the class of 2012 Facebook group has 432 members.
studentactivism.net 
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