Author Archive: aminor

UC Regents Vote Wednesday on Fee Hikes: Will Students Pay More for Less?

Monday, November 16th, 2009

3290560161_2d6d820070_mThis Wednesday at 11am, the UC Regents will convene at UCLA to vote on fee hikes. This vote will determine whether or not UC students, which account for nearly 220,000 students in California, will face a 15% increase in tuition this year.

While decisions about college affordability have impacted the lives of students across the country, students in California are hit particularly hard with the current deficit looming over the state. The vote to take place on Wednesday to raise student fees is a result of the state budget crisis, which has left the UC with a shortfall of $982.2 million in the last two years. As the state continues to cut funding from the UC system, the UC Regents have proposed raising fees year after year to subsidize those cuts. For the 2009-2010 year, they have proposed an overall 30% increase, which would put tuition over $10,000 for the first time.

There is a state-wide call to action to defend public education in California. As of now, an estimated 600 students from the UC system plan on arriving at UCLA Wednesday morning to join in solidarity and to tell the UC Regents that this proposal is unacceptable.

You can either join them in person in Los Angeles, or take action at http://checkingeducation.com/petition.

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Remembering Why the Fight for the Public Option Continues

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Fact #1: 47 million people are uninsured while another 87 million are underinsured
Fact #2: 18,000 people die every year because of a lack of proper health care.
Fact #3: 73% of physicians support a public option.
(Want more facts? Click here)

When looking at the facts, the answer to how to fix our broken health care system seems obvious. As the health care debate continues, the art of politics, or 3181559984_57112b5008_m1should I say, the bureaucracy within our democratic Congress, has made this answer more complicated than it should be.

Yesterday morning, Campus Progress attended a hearing, “Costs of Broken Health Care System, Benefits of Public Option,” hosted by Representative Jackson-Lee and Representative Conyers, who convened patients, physicians, and experts to push for a robust public option.

This hearing was by no means a political debate about health care; it was instead, an opportunity for individuals to give testimony to why the public option plays a fundamental role in the health and happiness of all Americans. While many of us are trying to understand the politics of the health care reform legislation, the answer becomes clear once you listen to the tragedies that many of our fellow Americans have had to endure due to poor or no coverage.

During the hearing, we watched a 3-minute clip of a film, “Reinventing Paradise,” where the producer, Natalie Noel, was also present and gave testimony. Natalie is a cancer patient whose insurance coverage was recently terminated and her 3-minute clip captures stories of Gulf Coast residents who have suffered health-care hardships post-Katrina. Representative Jackson-Lee responded to Noel’s film and testimony by stating, “although all of us want to believe we live in a democracy…we know some are left out; the sick, the frail, the mentally ill…those who can’t tell their stories.”

There were more than twenty witnesses who gave testimony, including a woman named Joan Kosloff. Joan came to the hearing on behalf of her son, Eric, who died last year to pneumonia due to his lack of health insurance. As Joan gave her testimony, pictures were passed around of Eric (who was 44) and his 3 year old daughter—it was very difficult to hold back tears. After her testimony, Dr. Carson of Johns Hopkins responded, “we must build a powerful coalition of consciousness” to remind members of Congress of what the consequences may be without a public option.

While every member of Congress is faced with 3.5 lobbyists working for insurance companies, testimonies like these should win out over lobbyist propaganda because these stories unveil the truth that this fight is no longer for a public “option,” it is for a public necessity.

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Rain or Shine, Hundreds of Activists Rally for the International Day of Climate Action

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Supporters Form Circle of Hope Saturday Afternoon

Supporters Form Circle of Hope Saturday Afternoon

On Saturday, people in over 181 countries gathered in solidarity for the International Day of Climate Action. With nearly 5,200 events taking place around the world, most news sources credit it to be “the most widespread day of environmental action in history”.

The international day of climate action was coordinated by 350.org, an international campaign dedicated to resolving the climate crisis. 350 represents the amount of CO2 emissions that scientists have identified as the safe limit for our atmosphere—we are currently around 390.

The event in our nation’s capital began at Malcom X Park where performers and speakers, including Reverend Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Friss Peterson, and Mike Tidwell, the Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, spoke out on the crisis facing our environment and the need for action by our leaders. Despite the pouring rain, hundreds of people marched from Malcom X Park to Lafayette Park to show their support, declaring “Rain or Shine, Now’s the time, We got 350 on our mind”.

At Lafayette park, the hundreds to supporters rallied by forming a circle of hope with a banner signed by 1,200 students from across the country. While this began as a grassroots movement, the time has come to demand action by our leaders. As mentioned in the post below, a conference will take place in December in Copenhagen where world leaders will determine solutions to the climate crisis and hopefully craft a new global treaty. The next step is to make sure that President Obama attends the conference and is one of the leaders in resolving the current climate crisis.

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Private Lenders Sued for Violating Higher Education Act

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

3280454668_8ee25b5e831In May 2008, a civil action suit was filed in Nebraska when concerns arose that Nelnet, which is a higher education lender, was illegally coercing students to apply for federal student loans. This lawsuit has reemerged after sealed court documents proved these concerns to be true.

JPMorgan and Citigroup conspired with Nelnet to allegedly receive financial student loan subsidies by making false claims and illegally recruiting more borrowers.

The lawsuit is currently underway against JPMorgan, Citigroup and Nelnet for violating laws against offering financial inducements under the federal Higher Education Act.

The lawsuit claims that Nelnet hired telemarketers to aggressively push the government product and use false advertising to get more applications, such as telling students they would save thousands of dollars in interest by applying to their loan program. From this illegal practice, Nelnet has obtained millions of dollars in federal subsidies on student loans.

This was not the first violation of the federal subsidy that Nelnet has faced. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education agreed on a settlement which allowed Nelnet to keep $278 million in disputed profits after it faced a similar lawsuit. After this incident, the company signed agreements with state authorities promising not to offer incentives to students in need of loans. With the recent lawsuit filed in Nebraska, it is clear that they had no intentions of keeping their promise.

The government could have intervened in the suit, but declined. If the government won’t do something about this reoccurring issue, it is time for students to do something. You can get involved in our Student Over Banks campaign by going to: http://www.studentsoverbanks.org/

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For-Profit Schools Question the Integrity of Higher Education

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Yesterday morning Campus Progress attended the House Subcommittee for Education and Labor hearing on “Ensuring Student Eligibility Requirements for Federal Aid”. The hearing addressed how colleges and universities administer and enforce student eligibility requirements for federal financial aid.

In recent years, the Department of Education has begun auditing recipients of financial aid in order to ensure that the eligibility requirements are being enforced. They discovered that this was not the case and there were several incidents of fraud.

Testimonies at the hearing were given by Harris Miller, CEO/President of the Career College Association, Mary Mitchelson, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education, and Robert Shireman, Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Education. Mr. Miller set the tone of the discussion by stating that “there is no room for cheating in the rules of higher education”.

Cases of fraud [PDF] were found to be most common in ATB (Ability to Benefit) testing. The ATB test is administered to students who did not receive a high school diploma but wish to pursue a secondary education with federal financial aid. Mr. Miller presented evidence of cases where test administrators have given answers to students to ensure that they pass the test. Mr. Shireman argued that “this lack of oversight has resulted in fraudulent access to federal aid which questions the integrity of higher education”. The issue of online coursework was also of concern. Mrs. Mitchelson argued that fraud is common among students who take online courses, stating that the “online context has a lot of ambiguity of who is participating for what purpose”.

Federal financial aid plays a very important role in the ambitions of students, especially those students who don’t have the resources to attend college. The issue with ATB testing and online courses, however, is that they are often provided by for-profit schools which means they are profit driven and their intentions are not in the best interest of the student. These schools are constantly in trouble for aggressive recruiting practices. They make tons of money by recruiting as many people as possible while the students who don’t finish their courses end up in enormous amounts of debt.

Campus Progress is currently working to fight issues like these in our Students Over Banks campaign. If you want to learn more about this campaign, go to http://www.studentsoverbanks.org/

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