Education Middle Class Scholarship Act Could Halve Tuition
- May 21, 2012
By Ana Tintocalis
KQED Reporter
The middle class college experience goes like this: Your parents make too much money to qualify for financial aid, but they don't make enough to pay your tuition. So students juggle jobs, take out loans and accumulate a mountain of debt.
"My parents ... they expect to retire, but they can't because they have tuition to pay. I can't pay tuition. I can't pay my own tuition. And I've already taken out loans. It's my third year and I have 10, 20 thousand dollars in loans. And that's a lot," says Michelle Xiong, a Cal State East Bay student.
Many students simply call it quits.
Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez wants to change that by closing a corporate tax loophole as part of the Middle Class Scholarship Act, which he says would bring in enough money to reduce tuition at California's public universities.
Big business opposes the plan. So far Republicans in the Legislature aren't convinced, either -- they're promising to block the bill.