Occupy Colleges: Students Walk Out of College Classes in Protest

to continue my previous thought, afterwards i plan on going to sullivan or art institute to be a chef. and it's going to cost A LOT of money.im not going to SKIP those classes for anything.for example,in relatinon to the protest, i know that some schools are implementing work-study programs. just not the ones i want to go to. the colleges are benefiting from giving the students free tuition by the work that the students do for the school in return. what if we wrote up a petition? or protested in favor of that? the colleges using the program in my area have students working at college restaurants and for UPS and paying them. that sounds protest/petition worthy to me.

LittleRosePetal: You are doing it exactly right. One step at a time. Why does everybody think they need to get their entire college education from a big, fancy school? Why can't people go a year or two in a community college? How about taking night courses? How about getting a job doing *anything* at a company that will help yo pay for your college education? And whenever I say *anything*, I mean it: be a janitor or cut the grass or a myriad of other menial jobs. It's a foot in the door AND it helps pay for your education.

I am the first to admit that these things are not the easy way to go. It took me NINE YEARS from the time I graduated high school until I got my college degree. I know others who took longer. I worked at some pretty pathetic jobs most of that time and I had to pay for my own education the entire time. I chose not to go the community college route and chose a medium-like school to get my education. I found I was just as prepared as people who went to marquee schools and work experience taught me that it is not the school you go to but how HARD you work whenever you are in school.

Finally: How are you going to get colleges to lower tuition? This is all too vague. People are saying they want cheaper tuition but they are not proposing how to get there. Float some very specific ideas.

fgrady--Just how do you propose to make it more affordable? Force people who have jobs to pay for you to go to college? What would you do to get these good jobs? Make it mandatory for companies to hire people and pay them what you believe is a good wage?

Will the professors who walk out with the students be willing to lower their salaries? Will the football and basketball coaches agree to coach their teams voluntarily? Will the leaders of the colleges take a pay cut or quit building? I think not.

Listen: You need to have skin in the game. Do you really think college was cheap back in the day? I paid around $145 per credit back in the 1980s. That comes out to about $4,350 a year or $17,400 for my total education. BUT...it took me almost seven years to complete it (so I paid less per credit at the beginning and more at the end).

I paid for it all (with school loans and living at home). I worked almost full-time throughout at minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage back then was something like $3.35 per hour, if I remember correctly. That means I made less than $7,000 per year if I worked full-time!! Please tell me how it is worse now?

I lived in Pittsburgh at the time and the unemployment rate was almost 25% for several of those years and was still extremely depressed whenever I finally got my degree. My first job right out of the gate paid me about $22,000 a year. Ewwww! Wow!!! That really went a long way after you paid student loans and car insurance and rent and bought groceries and clothes, didn't it? Even back then.

How was that situation better than today? You have to start out at the bottom and work your way up the food chain. Everything cannot (and SHOULD NOT) be easy. Anybody in this country can be anything they strive to be.

Finally: Just how much does it cost to run a school? Do the protesters know anything about that? I think not. They just want what they want. Heck, I want all of those things, too, but it is a pipe dream. Look at the list of demands the "protesters" are asking for once. They are Marxist as heck.

Please quit looking to others to give you ting things you wants and desire.

Education is not an American right, but it should be a human right. Make that 'rite'.

Holy cow. This is insane. I am not even going to get into the "police brutality" or "Occupy Wall Street" comments because there is speculation that the entire "movement" was staged and planed by the SEIU.

Here is the deal: The word "equality" is being taken out of context. The Constitution exclaims that we are all BORN equal. It means we all equally have the right to succeed: it does not mean we all share the wealth equally. It is up to each individual to define "succeed" for themselves.

I have a college education and I received it waaay back in 1987...BUT...I really should have graduated in 1982! I graduated high school in 1978 and it took almost TEN YEARS to get thru four years of college. I could not afford to go to college full-time: my parents could not afford it but they were not poor enough to obtain governmental financial assistance. I admit I lived at home the entire time, which saved me a lot of money, but I worked full-time and went to school at the same time. I paid for it all myself. It was hard. And, yes, I missed the "college experience" many people I know had because I never went away to school. I had to do it the hard way but I did it. I did not get out of it debt-free, either.

Another thing: what type of degree are you getting? Are you getting a degree in Women's Studies? Good luck getting a job because you are not qualified to DO anything. Are you getting a degree in general BUSINESS? Good luck getting a job because there are thousands of others who also graduated with the same, general degree. Worse, if you DO get job, don't expect to get paid well because there are too many others who have the same degree.

I also know a lot of people who refuse to take a job because it is not exactly what they want or it is not paying what they want. They are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. You can get a job at a nice company as a janitor and move into the position you want there. You just need to get your foot in the door.

Finally: Do you think you need a college education? The problems all started with my parent's generation when they all said their kid is not going to be a bricklayer: they are getting an education. Now we have a highly educated society and nobody left who can lay bricks. Or wire a house. Or install a toilet. Or a host of other professions that were ignored. The trades are a great place to go now. (Don't laugh: find out how much it costs to have a plumber come to your house these days? A lot more than people on unemployment!!)

Oh,yeah, and please don't say silly things like banks are the reason it costs so much to go to college. Maybe the college professors are being paid too much? Maybe colleges are building too many new structures. Maybe there is a hole lot of reason that have everything to do with the way the college is run and little to do with banks or Wall Street or "rich" people.

Like somebody else said here: Higher education is a privilege; not a right. It is something everybody can obtain--this does not mean it will be cheap or easy. Nothing that is worth it IS easy.

I'm sorry but, please, suck it up. The "rich" people in this country are not holding anybody back: if somebody is being held back, they are doing it to themselves. LIFE AIN'T FAIR.

There are some great points here made from both sides but as a student I have lots of scholarships and grants compared to many as well as an unpaid internship. But I do have friends that dropped out of school due to the cost...even with good grades and working part-time so I can see the downside of this. I do NOT feel walking out of classes will solve anything though because your tuition is already paid or being paid the university does NOT care they are getting paid regardless... But you still have to pass those classes... Good Intentions just bad type of protest...let's try another method that won't cause students to fail their classes lol

@ Jessica,

You make a great point when referring to the Occupy Wall Street protests. What are your thoughts on Occupy Colleges? As Kathryn suggests in her article, "Occupy Colleges was a peaceful stand against the current state of affairs in higher education. In fact, there were many professors at participating colleges who very much supported the point that students are trying to make." She also hints at how as the job markets steadily continue to worsen, tuition costs steadily continue to rise. If you were a student about to enter college and take on an average tuition cost of $100,000 would the question still be if this was out of envy? I think that question may only apply to the occupy wall street protests, in which case I strongly agree with you.

Bankers got involved.. That is the entire problem with the tuition constantly rising. It will be like the housing market bubble and it will eventually burst. I'm 56 working on my Masters in IT fortunately the company I work for pays 75% of my tuition.