The budget crisis is nothing new for California colleges. Nannette Miranda with ABC local reported that starting May 2012, community college tuition is increasing by $10 a unit to $46, making it more financially difficult for students to get an education that once was free. 

Santa Monica College’s board of trustees had proposed a measure offering students core classes at about four times the regular price.  The classes would have been priced at the actual cost, quadrupling unit prices to about $200 per unit. 

The college’s proposed two-tier plan would only make things worse, as students just saw their tuition go up $10 a unit this past fall. That means students taking 15 units now have to pay an additional $150 per term. 

The program would have started this summer if it had not been for student protests against its passage at the board of trustees meeting, with 30 students being pepper sprayed and three hospitalized by campus police.

The proposal is now put on hold, and the 50 summer classes that were offered were cut. Santa Monica College President Chui Tsang said the program was meant to “increase accessibility to the college,” student newspaper Corsair reported. 

In his statement, Tsang said the program would help students save money by taking these general education classes at the college rather than the CSU’s or private schools, and allow students to reach educational goals by not having to be waitlisted for limited seating in classrooms. However, the exorbitant cost of classes would discriminate against low-income students.

This has the potential to start a wildfire among California community colleges as other colleges may follow suit. Reasons why people attend a community college in the first place is for the cheap aspect of classes as opposed to four-year university prices for the same general education.

This undermines the whole mission statement of community college, and that’s to be accessible and affordable,” said Santa Monica College freshman Aura Chavez to L.A. Times.

Why should some students be able to move forward because they can afford it, while others who cannot fork over the exorbitant tuition be left behind? Even more, low-income students who qualify for BOG fee waivers would not be able to use their waivers towards these classes. 

“The program was meant to be a modern-day Robin Hood where the rich would pay more money so the school could benefit,” Board Trustee Rob Rader told the Associated Press.

While I agree we have a financial crisis, the desperate attempt by the college to make money off the rich students in order to move them along is not the answer. 

Colleges need to re-evaluate their priority registration for the better somehow, because I know of students who attend quarter after quarter getting nowhere and holding onto classes they end up dropping, and priority registration is for those students who accumulate a certain number of units. Even instructors have priority registration before the students if they desired to enroll in a course.