Editorial 2: Housing costs responsibility of taxpayers

Students should not be made to fund the university’s quest
to house a higher percentage of students on campus, period.

But perplexingly, the state deems all housing expenses to be
auxiliary to the costs of education, meaning they aren’t
included in taxpayers’ financial responsibility to the UC.
This means student pockets will fund a lot of the costs necessary
for the university to meet the expansion goals set out by the
housing Master Plan for 2010: more than 21,000 students, or about
60 percent, living on campus or within one mile.

There is no practical way to separate housing costs from
education ““ the former are necessary to attain the latter.
Toting UCLA as affordable and then telling students the only thing
they have to pay for themselves is the cost of living in West Los
Angeles is deceptive. Many students, especially those who are
economically disadvantaged, have to take out a significant amount
of loans to make up the difference.

With students already paying up to two and a half times more to
live on campus than they do to attend classes, the burden of
housing expansion costs has to be shifted off their shoulders on to
those of California’s taxpayers. Legislation should be passed
that makes this possible and acknowledges the obvious: housing
costs are a basic fact of higher education.