一本教会你“做对”题的6级阅读书 day6 passage3
Passage 3 States of Crises
加利福尼亚州学费危机 《新闻周刊》
Whether you're an oppressive foreign dictatorship
or an American state in the process of committing fiscal suicide,
you know you're losing the public relations battle
when encounters between armor-clad riot police with truncheons
and college students are broadcast on TV.
That's the sad situation California found itself in last week,
after the University of California Board
of Regents announced a staggering 32 percent midsemester tuition hike.
Students responded by demonstrating,chanting,and occupying administration buildings.
Things got unruly, law enforcement was called,
and within hours it was every spin doctor's nightmare,
replayed endlessly on cable news.
[01:00]As is often the case, California is leading a national trend.
[01:05]Higher education is becoming less affordable across the country every year.
[01:11]If states and universities don't make major structural changes in the way they operate,
[01:18]anger and frustration could start to boil over nationwide.
[01:23]The UC tuition crisis is a symptom of the larger collapse of governance in the Golden State.
[01:30]It takes two thirds of both houses in the state General Assembly to raise taxes,
[01:37]while new spending programs can be created by public referendum.
[01:43]Tax dollars are too hard to raise and too easy to spend,
[01:48]leaving the state lurching from one budget crisis to the next.
[01:52]The young men and women rushing to the barricades on UC campuses are Ronald Reagan's children,
[01:59]victims of a failed antigovernment movement that managed to turn people against taxes
[02:05]while leaving their appetite for public services unchecked.
[02:12]The pattern has been repeated in state after state over the past 30 years,
[02:17]even in places that raise and spend money in a normal way. Every time a recession hits,
[02:26]tax-frightened state legislators raise revenue by cutting university budgets disproportionately
[02:34]and allowing tuition to make up the difference, a back-door levy that hits poor
[02:39]and middle-class students the hardest. New York State, for example,
[02:44]is following California's lead with severe cuts to its public universities.
[02:51]A recent report from the College Board shows the price of college
[02:55]is growing faster than family income,
[02:58]GDP, and even the health-care costs that are threatening to break the public treasury.
[03:05]And those numbers were compiled before the huge price hikes in California and elsewhere.
[03:11]As a result, more students are borrowing more money for college than ever before,
[03:17]and loan default rates have increased sharply in just the last two years.
[03:23]Increasingly, low-income students are getting priced out of four-year universities
[03:28]and forced into lower-cost community colleges-or out of higher education altogether.