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My name is Frances and I am a pre-med student in CUNY, while I await for next fall to go to Cuba to Med school, because I can't afford Med school here, the government blankets the banks with our tax dollar in N.Y.S. turns to SUNY and CUNY and tells us we will be hit three times hard. Tuition Hike, MTA, Tax increases. But, while the working class and poor people like myself try to better themselves they close the door on us. Investing in Higher Education with public dollars should be the proposed plan of this government they treathen us with budget cuts. The cuts proposed will cripple the future leaders of this state and country. Most of our politicians come from the CUNY system when it was free.If the budget cuts go through and tuition increases Broncx Community College will loose 30% of it's enrollment. The increase of incoming students is because CUNY is the most affordable uniersity that we know opens door for us. CUNY has a creed free and affordable education for eveyone and anyone no matter class, race, color or religion CUNY is open for you. What happende to that, did all our politicians alumnis from CUNY forget that?

I'd like to echo the comments of Norman and B Marx above. Finally, in the last 2 minutes of the segment you got around to the REAL issue at hand. While any additional grant assistance is welcome, the amounts we're talking about seem little more than a drop in the ocean. When we consider how outrageously the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in the last two decades vis a vis inflation in the rest of the economy, and add to that the generally pitiful salaries paid to a mainly non-tenured or adjunct faculty class, shouldn't we be asking for some real justification of these costs. To force students and their parents to live on a financial tightrope for decades to come seems insidious and counter-productive in the long run.
Lastly, as long as the true nature of this problem continues to be avoided, the government should at least lower the current usurious interest rates they collect on their guaranteed loans.

Before we sink more money into the hole of thieves, aka banks; why don't we invest some of these billions into a State - federal run bank that loans this money to students in a responsible way, since the government guarantees the loans any way.

Bit criminal to be selling our children to the banks at so young an age.

That is right, just finished helping my child pay tuition, anything I get back will help.

Here in GA, they cut higher ed budget and pushed it onto the students. I figure - anything will help. Our tuition has gone up by 700 dollars which isn't horrible but doesn't help graduate students who are living paycheck to paycheck already...

Howard Zinn, the historian, said that higher education should be free.

College and university is free in many of the countries that we're competing with, especially in Europe.

Why should our young people have to go into debt to get a college education?

Or not be able to afford it at all, and have to compete with European kids?

CUNY leadership would like to build a new community college instead of investing in what's falling apart all around us after decades of disinvestment from NY State.

CUNY needs full time, tenure track faculty, not continuing work on the cheap with thousands adjunct instructors who do not have adequate pay and benefits.

Students need financial aid and other resources, not a tuition hike.

my least favorite aspect of the economic stimulus package is the removal of provisions to provide affordable family planning. this is unconscionable! the Medicaid Family Planning State Option would allow millions of women to access affordable health care *and* it would actually save states money by supplementing their already strained budgets. this is an EXTREMELY DISPPOINTING development.