New Scholarship Program Misguided
June 3, 2010
by Wais Hassan
Santa Ana College, a community college located in central Orange County, will create a scholarship in memory of Tam Ngoc Tran of Garden Grove. On May 15, Tran was killed in a car accident by a suspected drunk driver. Tran, an undocumented graduate student studying at Brown University, was a DREAM Act Immigration activist. During the past few years she had been organizing to pass the DREAM Act; a proposed immigration reform policy that would grant US citizenship to undocumented students who complete college degrees or successfully serve in the military. Santa Ana College, the first college Tran attended, opted to create $2,500 scholarship for undocumented students who are interested in pursuing 4-year degrees and maintain 3.0 GPAs. Sara Lundquist, vice president of Student Affairs at Santa Ana, defended the controversial scholarship idea by stating that, “the scholarship would lack meaning if the student selected for the award were not taking the same path to citizenship as Tran.” The Santa Ana College Foundation, a private nonprofit finances the award and thus presumably no tax dollars will be used in its creation.
The scholarship idea has already generated heated opposition from California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa), who called the idea, “an affront to law abiding citizens who tax dollars will pay the bill.” Rohrabacher composed a letter to Santa Ana College President Erlina Martinez, that declares that, “channeling our scarce resources to illegal immigrants, even if they are students, is unforgivable at a time when so many of our citizens and legal residents are struggling to meet their own education needs.”
California already provides eligible undocumented students (those who attended 3 years of high school) in-state tuition rates. Anger over this measure is fairly understandable, considering the mounting challenges California legal residents have endured when pursing a higher education. Tuition has more than doubled at the prestigious University of California system during the past decade, as the 32 percent 2009 tuition hike caused tuition to skyrocket to more than $10,000 annually. The California State University system, California’s largest public university system, has also raised fees by 30 percent in the last two years.
Students from lower income and middle-income backgrounds have dwindling financial resources to draw upon to offset rising costs. Furthermore, community college students tend to be the most vulnerable to inflationary costs, as the California Community College (CCC) system serves a much greater proportion of low-income students than the higher status and better funded UC and CSU system do.
In 2009, the California state legislature hiked the cost of the community college tuition six percent, to $26 per unit. Taken by itself, the tuition rate seems to be a bargain in comparison to other states, but when factoring the high cost of living in California and the extremely high unemployment rate its apparent that Califronia community college students are feeling the squeeze. In 2007, educational policy experts William Zumeta and Deborah Frankle published a study on the CCC system that examined the impact of rising costs and curriculum reductions. The study concluded that the community college system was out of reach for many low-income students who could not afford rising non-fee costs such as books, housing and health care. The authors recommended an expansion of financial aid to help cover costs.
The budget crisis that engulfs California and the major recession nationally makses such policy proscriptions highly unlikely in the near future. Thus, private sources like the Santa Ana College Foundation must help bridge the gap by providng additonal funding to legal residents within the CCC system that are struggling. We cannot afford to waste resources on an undocumented population that will not be able to legally obtain jobs even after completion of a college degree. Community college students who succeed are a critical driver of California’s economy and thus it is good public policy to invest in those most able to contribute.
Furthermore, the community college district that houses Santa Ana College is one of the districts most financially strapped for cash and least responsive to the needs of its students. Santa Ana College is one of the two main campuses that encompass the Rancho Santiago Community District system, one of the largest junior college districts in California. Rancho Santiago was deeply hurt by the recent budget cuts. Indeed, from 2008 through 2010, budget cuts reached $35 million, summer session was cut by 25 percent, a hiring freeze was imposed, and nearly 800 full-time and part time jobs were eliminated. In fall 2009, enrollment within the district dropped 12 percent overall. Administrators in the district should spend more time managing the crisis the system is going through and much less time creating scholarships for students whose merit is questionable to begin with.
This blog was originally posted on The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wais-hassan/new-scholarship-program-m_b_609209.html
