Barack Obama has stated that undocumented students brought up in the United States are "American for all intents and purposes." Senator Richard Durbin has implored Congress to "give these kids a chance." Republican Sen.

I've been reading article after article about how higher education is becoming more out of reach for students due to higher  fees because of budget cuts. 

Below are three articles, one on colleges in general and two specifically the University of California and California State University systems.  

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/16/BANQ12UI6C.DTL&type=printable

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/technology/15link.html?pag...

Some professors are now apparently offering their textbooks online in response to the ridiculously high prices of textbooks today! 

http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=437

...and I need help!

Students who are first in their families to attend college are:

I think I have finally come up with an idea for my blue print. It is similar to the Big Brother/Big Sister program, but uses students of college organizations to encourage high school students to stay in school and help those who show an interst in college. I call this this plan Operation: Students Encouraging Education (SEE). More details to come in the near future. If you have ideas or comments, please let me know.

I had the extreme pleasure this weekend to host two high school students (a senior and junior) for the REACH! Shadow Night. REACH! is one of five student-initiated recruitment and retention centers (RRCs) on campus that works to actively outreach to students of color from the elementary to community college level. REACH! in particular caters to the Asian/Pacific Islander communities, such as Southeast Asian refugee communities (Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong, Mien, among others).

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on H.R. 5, the College Student Relief Act of 2007, which cuts the interest rates on student loans and passed on the House floor by a vote of 356 to 71, with all Democrats and 124 Republicans voting for the bill:

"Today's bipartisan vote to cut the interest rate in half on federally subsidized student loans over the next five years will help make a college education more affordable and more accessible for our next generation of leaders and innovators.  At a time when college tuition continues to skyrocket, this crucial legislation will help remove some of the barriers to a higher education.

"A college education is the best investment our nation's young people can make in themselves, and the best investment our nation can make in its future.  Democrats will continue to work to ensure that every young person that is determined to earn a higher education is able to do so.  Our young people should be driven by their dreams, not weighed down by debt."

"I think higher education is going in the wrong direction," says David Nifoussi, college-hater and Class of 2007, "it is becoming too expensive, only for rich people or those in debt". People these days seem to think that something is changing in higher ed, though that doesn't necessarily mean it is becoming less important, indeed according to Kabir Sethi (Class of 2009) "higher education is becoming more and more important". How is higher education changing? In today's article we will consider the few key trends in higher education.  

In his recent work on the subject, The University in Ruins, Bill Readings argues that functionally, higher education no longer promotes nation-states via the creation of a national culture, but instead has become just another administrative unit in the transnational corporate machine. As a consequence Reading sees colleges losing their privileged place as a model for society and social change, and are therefore, "in ruins". For Reading, this change is taking place via the supposedly neutral doctrine of "excellence", which has no intellectual ground but is instead an expansion of corporate accounting. In Reading's view, we no longer graduate as citizens of a country but as techno-bureaucrats of a trans-national commercial empire, or more ironically, "global citizens".

Some Mac students' see things on similar lines. Julia Stanfield feels that "everyone has to go to college these days" while Alex Park noted that "higher education is more and more polarized, if you're not in the upper class in the US you're in the lower class". Tommy Kim expands this argument by seeing it as an international trend: "higher ed is increasingly competitive but accessible to more and more elites around the world". It seems then that we are witnessing a worldwide stratification, where not nationality, but class, has taken center-stage.

More after the fold