However, paychecks haven’t yet caught up with inflation. Bachelors degrees are no longer good enough for even decent-wage jobs. Two years ago, my best friend graduated from a reputed university with a BS in physics. He got a job in his field making only two dollars more an hour than me (an under-educated hotel front desk receptionist, at the time). My other best friend received her bachelors in psychology, secured a counseling position, and was making a three dollars less than me. And this is an affluent section of Kansas City, that’s barely been touched by the recession. Both were told if they returned to school, they would receive higher wages. Yet most people can’t afford to simply return to school for a masters, never mind a doctorate. And if they can, they definitely can’t afford to pay student loans back. Basically, the only way to pay student loans back is to receive as much education as possible, which means taking longer to pay them back. If we denied them that option, the poverty gap would widen.

The tuition costs are more attributable to top brass college officials demanding insane paychecks for the kickbacks they offer community sources for their involvement. I.e. a successful college professor who earns the title of dean, later brought in as a provost of an outside college because he promises to secure bigger donations from alumni to pay for the new basketball court or gazebo garden. Don’t believe me? Take a good, hard look at the paycheck the decision-makers of UCLA are boasting, and tell me the tuition isn’t, in some way, padding that Those are your fat cats. As colleges have shifted away from being institutions of higher education and into businesses, neither the product nor the problem is truly education.

A 32% hike is obscene. How many students are going to be forced to curtail their education because of this? Sounds like some of the fat cats in California need to open up their wallets and give, give, give.