Wendolyn Leal    

Staff Writer

The California Faculty Association, a union of 23,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches who teach in the California State System, is currently involved in the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education.

This campaign is driven to ensure that affordable quality higher education is accessible to all sectors of society.

Sociology professor Garry Rolison explains, “the Campaign for funding Higher Education takes a different perspective and that perspective is that we can actually do it. We can continue to publicly fund our universities and we don’t have to fund them on the backs of students and increase tuition and fees.”

By design, the CFA exists to provide opportunities for everyone seeking higher education. The members advocate quality education for our students, fairness for instructors and policies that ensure access to higher education.

The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education has released three papers geared towards stimulating a more thought-provoking method about paying for higher education in the country.

According to futureofhighered.org, two of the CFHE working papers address the misconception that funding higher education through the public sector instead of steep increases in tuition is merely impossible. The other paper focuses on the idea of a free higher education and inspects what the actual cost to provide such an ideal would be.

Rolison is a strong believer in the power of education as are many of the supporters of CFHE. “It is a pathway for an informed citizenry and the realization of equality and democracy. But there will always be issues of equity, of course.

However, we are in a situation right now where, because of basic inequities, we don’t have everybody in the university that could benefit from education and if they don’t benefit, we don’t benefit,” Rolison said. Although the campaign has been initiated by university staff, it will take a broad movement of students, families, community and civil rights organizations, unions and allies from all sectors of the economy to make a difference.

As professor Rolison said, “the point of the matter is that we have the possibility to train students to become activists.” Those possibilities are feasible though the Students for Quality Education (SQE) organization as they mobilize to build the student movement for educational rights in public higher education.

Students for Quality Education are working closely with the California Faculty Association with a shared vision to improve educational justice in the CSU system. To learn more about funding for higher education, visit csusqe.org.