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A bill in the Arizona legislature would bar the state’s university system from providing scholarships that reduced out-of-pocket tuition to less than $2000 a year.
Republican John Kavanaugh says that keeping tuition low creates “perverse incentives” for students to enroll in college. His bill, which has 24 co-sponsors in Arizona’s 60-member House of Representatives, would restrict all grants, scholarships, and awards administered by the university, even those funded by private donors.
Students on full academic scholarships would be exempted from the regulation, as would those on athletic scholarships. Asked why athletes were exempt, Kavanaugh said “they contribute to school spirit, and those on football and basketball teams also generate a lot of extra revenue.”
The athletic and academic loopholes, of course, mean that the bill’s largest impact would be on need-based aid.
February 22 Update | The tuition bill, HB 2675, has just been approved by the Appropriations Committee of the Arizona House of Representatives in what Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic described as a “narrow” vote. On Twitter, Ms. Ryman described exchanges between committeemembers and students testifying against the bill as “heated,” giving the following example:
University of Arizona student James Allen: “You’re making it harder to achieve a higher education degree.”
Representative Michelle Ugenti: “Welcome to life.”
Ouch.
“The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities. If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they’d be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly get.”
—Rick Santorum, today.
When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that “when Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes,
it’s not because they envy the rich,” it was the first time he’d used the word “rich” in a State of the Union speech. And when he said, a few minutes later, that when Americans put on the uniform of our military, “it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor,” it was the first time he’d used the word “poor” on such an occasion.
Over four State of the Union addresses, including his “unofficial” SOTU in February 2009, the president had never used either term before.
In fact, one has to go back thirteen years, to President Clinton’s call in his final SOTU in 2000 for “a constructive effort to meet the challenge that is presented to our planet by the huge gulf between rich and poor,” to hear a president use the R-word in that way in a State of the Union. (Clinton referred to the poor several other times in that speech, as did George W Bush on a few occasions, most recently in 2008.)
I don’t want to make too much out of terminology. Presidents, including Obama himself, have used such phrases as “the wealthiest” in past SOTU speeches, and speaking and acting are of course two very different things too.
But the blunt language of rich and poor, previously absent, is absent no more.
Thanks, Occupy.
Update | A friend points out another difference:
2011 SOTU: “If we truly care about our deficit, we simply can’t afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.”
2012 SOTU: “If you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief. Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”
The change is unmistakeable.
Nineteen states cut higher education spending by more than ten percent last year, and total state funding to higher ed dropped by 7.6% nationwide, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
A quarter of the cuts came in California, which slashed its higher ed budget by 13.4%, but in percentage terms, ten states cut more. Three states’ cuts topped 20%, with New Hampshire clocking in at an incredible 41.3% decline.
And though the budget crunch bore the blame for a lot of cuts in 2009 and 2010, the latest round is taking place in an environment of growing state revenue — according to the Chronicle, aggregate state tax revenue has risen nationally in each of the last seven quarters. Meanwhile, higher ed spending is now 4% lower than it was in 2007, and still dropping.
And of course the brunt of these cuts are being felt by students, in many cases by those least able to pay.
Here’s a fact I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere: Ron Paul has come in first among voters under the age of 30 in all three Republican nominating contests this cycle. He won Iowa with 48%, New Hampshire with 46%, and South Carolina with 31%. In 2008, in contrast, he came in third among under 30s in Iowa and New Hampshire, and a weak fifth in South Carolina.
What’s going on here?
Well, mostly he’s just doing better with everybody. Paul’s numbers have always been highest among young voters, and they’ve generally been rising among under-30s more or less in proportion with how they’ve risen in the electorate as a whole.
But even so, the sheer magnitude of Paul’s youth support has got to be a little worrying for the party. Assuming that he’s not going to wind up the nominee — and everybody in the Republican establishment is making that assumption — that’s a lot of young people to bring back into the fold in November. And with Obama putting up huge numbers among under-30s in national polling on the general election, the GOP is going to need every young voter (and campaign worker) it can get.
The most obvious cause for panic in the Ron Paul youth polling, of course, would be a possible third-party run. But while Paul hasn’t unequivocally repudiated that idea, most observers think it’s not going to happen. (Here’s one really big reason why not.) Even with him on the sidelines in the fall, though, some of his young supporters may hesitate to pull the lever for Romney or Gingrich.
And there’s another reason for concern too. In Iowa and New Hampshire, youth support for Paul rose at about the same rate as his share of the overall vote — in Iowa, for instance, he got 2.1 times the votes in 2012 as in 2008, while his youth support was 2.3 times higher this time than last. In South Carolina, though, he tripled his support overall while quadrupling it among the young. If this trend continues and we see an accelerating youth rejection of establishment candidates, that could mean bigger headaches in the general.
Paul took 3% of the Florida vote in 2008, winning 5% of the youth vote. He’s polling at 9% there now, which is pretty much in line with his cycle-to-cycle improvement in the first three states, so assuming he winds up with about that total, we’d expect him to get something like 15% of young voters — and that’s with him largely ignoring the state.
If his Florida youth numbers are a lot higher than fifteen percent we could be seeing the start of something interesting.
January 31 Update | Exit polling has Ron Paul at 9% overall and at 26% among youth voters. That’s a tripling of his 2008 numbers for the whole electorate, and a quintupling of his numbers among youth. At this point I think it’s fair to say that the GOP has a Ron Paul problem with young voters.
studentactivism.net 
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