What’s worse for America

[Dill]

(02-02-2022, 08:03 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Hence  my qualifier regarding the status of CA.  If teachers are underpaid in a certain state, why is it the federal government's responsibility to fix this?  Have your state compensate teachers adequately.  I do agree with you 100% about out of pocket expenses, even here in CA parents have to supply much, if not most, of the school supplies the school uses for their children.  Very progressive.

It wasn't a direct comparison, which I already know you are aware of.  But it is absolutely in line with the Dem position that makes everyone reliant on the government for the things they want.  You want pre-K?  We'll pay for it!  You want a college education?  We'll pay for it!  At some point we have to draw the line at what education is "optional" versus what is required.  For a very, very long time we had that figured out, but then the Dems found a new way to lure in voters by offering free things that will be paid for by others. 

The bolded doesn't square well with the history of education in CA, certainly not with the history of higher education there. The "Dem position that makes everyone reliant on government" was already imagined by the fringe Right before the 1960s, but it was the civil rights driven educational policies of the '60s that began its push into mainstream politics.

Back in 1862, when the GOP was the progressive party and higher education was considered a public good (in the Union, not the Confederacy) Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant act, donating federal lands to states for the construction of universities.
 
The CA system was born of this and a merger of an existing private college in 1868, via the Organic Act, which stipulated (sec. 14) that while students might be charged initial fees, once the system was up and running, tuition was to be free to all CA residents.https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/CalHistory/charter.html (Though he left office in 1867, Republican gov. Frederic Low was the prime mover behind the new system and its free tuition, and its rightly considered the "father" of CA public higher ed.)

The policy of free tuition continued into the 1960s, explicitly reaffirmed in the 1960 Master Plan for higher ed in CA.
https://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/MasterPlan1960.pdf (p 174): "The two governing boards reaffirm the long established principle that state colleges and the University of California shall be tuition free to all residents of the state." (This principle included Cal State and CC institutions as well.)

So for a very, very long time—over 100 years—CA residents had it “figured out”: free tuition in a public university system which became one of the very best in the world, its flagship institution on par with Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and the U. of Paris.  You want free education? We'll pay for it. A bipartisan "yes"--though Repubs were the real authors of tuition-free higher ed.

Now, at a point in global history when tertiary education has never been more important to national and individual prosperity and security, CA defines it as "optional" by charging tuition like every other state, increasing it every year, making access to higher ed ever more difficult for poorer residents. What changed?

Nationally, a general revision of the concept of “public good” followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and in CA, the election of Reagan to the governorship in 1966. He initiated the neo-liberal program of recasting public goods as private, and shifting their cost back onto “consumers” to lower taxes. (Shifting costs for school supplies to parents is one effect.)  

As the concept of public good diminished, free higher ed became analogous to welfare—a free thing paid for by the many for the individual benefit of some. Affirmative Action became the "welfare program" of higher ed. Reagan could not roll back free tuition, but was able to increase the nominal instructional “fee” charged students to levels nearing the tuition of other states and, more importantly, began the defunding of CA universities which would continue over the next four decades. The defunding, in turn, created more pressure to make up costs in tuition. By 1982, students were paying over 1,000 dollars in such fees. From 1980 on, tuition was charged, and public funding was shifted from universities (and education in general) to the building and maintenance of one of the world’s largest prison systems. 

Placement in higher ed, especially graduate school, became more competitive as U. budgets shrank and the student population increased; the GOP found a new way to lure in voters harmed by their policies--blame Affirmative Action and advocate color blind admission, along with even lower taxes (which would further restrict places, raise costs and racialize admissions policies).

A generation after Limbaugh and Fox news, free-tuition is a "hard left" gimmick for getting votes and raising taxes.