How the many children of immigrants are affecting California's schools and universities

[Anders Hoveland]

Public Schools

In the state of California, total funding per pupil from all state, federal and local revenue sources was $11,649. With roughly 923,000 students in the state with illegal-immigrant parents, these students represented a total cost of nearly $10.8 billion out of a total 2008 k-12 education budget of $72 billion. These totals rely on average per-pupil funding numbers.

In 2007 Hispanics made up more than 48% of California's student population. As of 2010, according to the state Department of Education, 51% of the students (3.1 million) in the state are Hispanic! The state of California provided $9,266 per student in 2003. Note that this is only the funding recieved from the state, counties and cities fund the remainder of the educational costs. Using these numbers, it can be estimated that the cost to the state of California alone to educate its hispanic students is more than $28.7 billion.


Deteriorating School Districts

From a speech professor Elizabeth Warren gave in speech at Berkeley:

"The inflation adjusted cost of housing for a family without children between 1983 to 2003 increased 50%. During that same time period the inflation adjusted cost of housing for a family with children increased 100%. Why the huge difference? Families are paying more money for good school districts. Families without children do not have to buy houses in good school districts, and so they can have a wider pool of homes to select from."

With school districts becoming overwhelmed by the large influx of poor minorities, good school districts are a shrinking resource, and it is costing middle class families a large ammount of money.

It is difficult to understand why so many families with children do not care about the waves of undocumented immigrants illegally entering their country, but at the same time these families paid 100,000 dollars more for a house in a good school district, even though they could have gotten an identical house in a district with lots of poor minority children!

Most middle class parents feel very strongly about having their children in a good school district, and are very concerned when they percieve their school district to be deteriorating. Despite this, the increasingly "multiracial"-minded government seems intent on "integrating" schools, devising policies that will make predominantly middle class white schools more ethnically 'diverse'. By busing in poor minorities from impoverished areas outside the school district, they are effectively forcing whites to subsidize their local tax money and quality of their childrens education for the benefit of poor minority children.

Because of all the minority children overcrowding the school districts, many mothers are now forgoing careers to spend all day homeschooling thier children. The cost of these mother's time and loss of income from not working is often not considered when discussing the costs of educating the children of illegals. It is very common for three to four whole families to crowd into a single home that was only meant to house a single family. Because of this, many cities with large immigrant populations are overcrowded, without enough parking spaces or enough class rooms for all the children. The original schools were never designed to deal with so many students, and so in many of these schools, there are more portable building put up in the former athletic field than there are actual 'brick-and-mortar' class rooms. The middle class whites with children are fleeing these overcrowded school districts.


Universities

California once provided its residents with free college tuition to its state universities, but today can no longer afford to do so because of the rapidly changing demographics of the state. A sharp rise in student enrollment and a large increase in the proportion of students from low-income familes are to blame.

At one time, university education was essentially free for all California students. There was no tuition, only a few insignificant fees for non-educational related costs of attending school. Most of the funding came from taxpayers.

In 1990 the state paid 78% of the cost of educating each student. That percentage dropped to 47% in 2010, and will doubtless fall even further as California undergoes budget cuts. In 2011, for the first time, students will pay more for tuition than the state provides in funding. Tuition increases had begun many years before the recession.

In 2001, the average annual undergraduate tuition fees for the university of California system were 4000 dollars. As of 2011, the tuition cost is 13000.
Including the cost of dormitories/housing, the average cost to attend a UC school for one year is 31000, in part due to overcrowding and California's high cost of living.

To raise other revenues, most California university campuses are admiting larger proportions of out of state students, pay high tuition, but at the same time price other potential California students out of the limited number of university places. California now ranks near the bottom (in 43 place) among the other states in the percentage of the population that has been awarded college degrees.

The children of immigrants who go to college divert the state-funded scholarships away from the children of people who were born in this country. California has, several times, increased the tuition rates of everyone else specifically to give scholarships to “economically disadvantaged students”.
Students from higher income families are being charged more in order to subsidize low- and middle-income students. Many state universities are actually raising their tuition to give scholarships to economically disadvantaged children- whether they were born in this country or not!

The immigrant parents, who usually have low incomes, and frequently have limited tax histories in the USA, pay very little taxes into the system before their children apply for university. In some cases they have no tax history (because they are illegally working in this country) and the employer never witheld any taxes from their paycheck. Even if the children of immigrants did not get any state scholarships, state universities are heavily subsidized by the state, which means that the cost of tuition only reflects a portion of the actual cost of educating the student. Going to college is now becoming increasingly unaffordable to many of California's residents.

University applicants are increasingly being rejected, and the entry requirements have continued to be raised because of the increased number of college applicants, since there are not enough places for them all. Many students with lower grade point averages are unable to get accepted into a school. Even students with good grade point averages are finding that is not possible to get accepted into a college near their parent’s house. This means they are unable to save money by living with their parents, even though the cost of living at college has grown increasingly unaffordable. It is now extremely difficult, nearly impossible, for California students to get accepted into UC Los Angeles or UC Berkeley, because of the overcrowding caused by the uncontrolled immigration in recent decades.

A very disproportionate number of these university applicants are of Asian ethnicity.

The California state universities will be increasing their tuition 21 percent this year. Tuition and fees for the current school year (not including housing!) average $8,244 at public four-year colleges in hte state.

This is partly because of reduced state funding to the universities, and partly because the universities are raising tuition on everyone else to give more financial aid to low income students, including those that are illegally living in the country!

More hispanic children= more low income students= more financial assistance= higher tuition for everyone else.

Many public universities have instituted their own form of socialism: they raise tuition on students from middle class families to subsidise financial aid to "disadvantaged" and "minority" students.

People are taxed, ostensibly to pay for public education which their children will later utilize. The catch is that in order to ever get their money back, they have to pay additional money to pay for all the other people's [illegal immigrants] children who cannot afford to pay for education. Rather than the government simply directly taxing everyone to pay for university for the children of the poor, the government forces individuals themselves to pick up the cost (through higher prices) or forfeit the public university systems that their tax money has funded. These sorts of schemes seem very deceptive.

[Rick Ronsavelle]

California once provided its residents with free college tuition to its state universities

People are taxed, ostensibly to pay for public education which their children will later utilize

Either free or not. Not free if taxes are involved.

Why do you think the deep thinkers oppose government schools?