Posted by Maica Pichler on June 15, 2015 at 1:31 PM
Recently, I had a discussion about language that I preferred to use to describe the response to Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore, Maryland. His death, and countless others across the country, had sparked a popular uprising. During the movement, I noticed on Twitter that the hashtags #BaltimoreRising and #BaltimoreUprising were being used by a lot of folks sympathetic to the cause.
I insisted that these were more appropriate than using the term “riot,” but someone quickly chastised me, and said,“This whole movement has been about defying shame. I’m happy to reclaim ‘riot’ rather than distance/euphemise [sic].”
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Posted by Maica Pichler on June 12, 2015 at 11:26 AM
When I published my book Why Public Higher Education Should be Free two years ago, I felt like a lone, crazy voice in the wilderness, but recently we have seen many initiatives to attain the goal of debt-free public higher education.
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Posted by Maica Pichler on June 03, 2015 at 8:17 AM
I am very excited to announce that I have begun working with CFCT full-time to ensure that we can make college tuition free, nationwide.
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Posted by Maica Pichler on May 19, 2015 at 9:19 AM
The good news is that revenues for most state governments are rising as the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession. The bad news is that most state governments are not devoting enough of their increasing revenues to restoring the draconian cuts they made in their higher education budgets in 2008-09. As we said in Step 3 of our plan to make all public colleges tuition free, the states must do their part to reduce the burden of rising tuition prices on American families if we are going to achieve our goal of tuition free college in all 50 states.
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Posted by Maica Pichler on April 01, 2015 at 7:44 AM
The Campaign for Free College Tuition’s (CFTC) recently held a very successful plenary meeting – and conference call for out-of-town participants – to consider the work of the taskforces that were formed at the conclusion of our Free College Summit in January. The discussions focused on finding common ground to build support for free tuition for community colleges. The taskforces were asked to develop answers to the following five questions:
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Posted by Maica Pichler on March 12, 2015 at 6:40 AM
I am pleased to report that NDN, a leading think tank and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, has joined CFCT’s bipartisan coalition to make college tuition free in all 50 states. As we work to educate parents, students, the higher education community, policy makers and taxpayers about efforts needed to reform fundamentally our nation’s broken system for financing the cost of higher education, NDN’s understanding of the millennial generation and their impact on the future of American politics will make them a valued partner. We firmly believe free college tuition is a goal that is supported by people of all political persuasions – as evidenced by President Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal and Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise program – and are proud to have both major parties represented in our leadership.
Simon Rosenberg, the President and Founder of NDN, stated “ensuring that America has a well-educated workforce that isn’t crippled by student loan debt is a bold cause that would have a positive benefit for all. I applaud CFCT’s historic commitment to free universal education by making public colleges tuition free in all 50 states.”
Please visit the NDN website to read their statement of support.
Posted by Maica Pichler on March 11, 2015 at 1:27 PM
At the Campaign for Free College Tuition, we believe that the debate about college affordability shouldn’t be taking place behind closed doors. CFCT and our members care deeply about our nation’s direction, and that’s why on the evening of March 3, 2015, we hosted a conference call with President Obama's free community college point person, Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell, our very own Morley Winograd, CFCT President and former senior policy advisor to Vice President Gore, and supporters to discuss how we must ensure free college education for all Americans.
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Posted by Maica Pichler on February 27, 2015 at 12:00 PM
The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education recent report, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States, has brought to light the past 45 years of growing inequality in our higher education system. The basics of the report: since the 1980s, parallel to the phenomenon of sky rocketing price of tuition, state and local governments have reduced their spending on higher education, while Federal funding of Pell grants pays for an increasingly smaller share of the cost of attending college. Thus, the financial burden of paying for tuition have been increasingly placed on to American families to compensate for continued state and local government divestment of higher education.
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Posted by Maica Pichler on February 27, 2015 at 7:55 AM
This is an excerpt from a post by Eric Kelderman and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Read the full story here.
Amanda Raven Smith wants to go to college. But she doesn’t want to have the same experience as her father, who spent decades paying off student loans for a degree he couldn’t afford to finish.
"I had been planning on it," she said, "but didn’t have a way to do the funding."
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Posted by Maica Pichler on February 09, 2015 at 11:33 AM
Bob Samuels is president of UC-AFT and a lecturer at UCSB. He is the author of seven books including Why Public Higher Education Should be Free. He writes the blog Changing Universities.
President Obama’s plan to make the first two years of community college free is a great first step in the larger movement to increase college access, affordability, and quality. The president’s initiative will help to decrease the net cost of higher education for millions of students, and even if it does not get the support of Congress, the plan has already changed the public conversation about the future of higher education in the United States.
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