December 18, 2009

Letters To The Editor:

Dear Editor,

RE:

California Higher Education

As the year draws to a close, it’s hard not to notice a theme in recent higher education news in California: Crisis. Massive fee hikes at UC, enrollment freezes at CSU, and classes and programs cut at community colleges across the state.

California needs more college graduates to power our economy and keep us competitive. Unfortunately, right now only 24% of the community college students who intend to graduate with an associate degree or transfer to a four year school, succeed in doing so. Part of the reason for this is the long hours that many students work – the number of hours a typical community college student works is a key obstacle to their academic success.

At the same time, we know that community college students often don’t receive all the financial aid that they are eligible for – with some estimates up to $220 million in federal student aid being left, uneaten, on the table.

We may not be able to fix the budget crisis in Sacramento, but we can make sure that every community college student fills out the FAFSA, and gets all the aid they are eligible for.

Margaret Howe

Works in Santa Monica

Lives in Los Angeles

Dear Editor

RE:

Tom Elias’ logic (October 30) proporting that 50 million Swedes can come here in Viking ships, invade our country, demand that Swedish be taught in schools, demand Sec 8 housing for Swedes, demand that the DMV print all in Swedish, etc. The Census Bureau should count all illegal alien Swedes, because we need more “Swedish faces” in the US Congress.

Do you see how ridiculous this sounds? TD Elias says we need more congressional districts, more Hispanic faces in Congress. Truly, counting all 50 million illegal aliens from Mexico or Poland or Russia WILL lead to more Russian faces, more Polish faces in Congress. But this is not the America I know. We are a country not of “diverse cultures” but rather “diverse ethnicities.”

My Polish mother served Polish dishes at home. Every Hispanic family can have their ethnic foods, piñatas etc. But this is America. The United States of America. It is not Mexico, nor is it Poland.

Craig Wilson

Westchester