facing painful cuts and tuition hikes u.s. students occupy education

http://www.nationofchange.org/facing-painful-cuts-and-tuition-hikes-us-students-occupy-education-1330785729

It was Mar. 1, Oc­cupy Ed­u­ca­tion's Na­tional Day of Ac­tion, ob­served with marches and ral­lies at some 30 Cal­i­for­nia uni­ver­si­ties and at a num­ber of venues around the coun­try.

While much of the media fo­cused on the steep tu­ition hikes at state uni­ver­si­ties and com­mu­nity col­leges, many par­tic­i­pants at UC Berke­ley used the lens of the Oc­cupy Move­ment - the 99 per­cent ver­sus the one per­cent - to ex­am­ine the un­der­ly­ing prob­lems in ed­u­ca­tion.

Deez spoke to IPS dur­ing a down­pour while wait­ing for a noon­time rally on the UC Berke­ley cam­pus. She con­tended that the in­flu­ence of cor­po­ra­tions such as BP – for­mally British Pe­tro­leum – which has part­nered with the uni­ver­sity and its af­fil­i­ated lab­o­ra­to­ries on a 400,000-dol­lar bio­fu­els in­sti­tute, heav­ily in­flu­ences the de­part­ments in which uni­ver­sity funds are spent. She said the hu­man­i­ties have no cor­po­rate fund­ing and face in­creas­ing cuts.

More­over, she said, cor­po­rate in­ter­ests have turned the uni­ver­sity away from its mis­sion."The idea of ca­reerism has taken over the uni­ver­sity," she said. "There's no idea of going to the uni­ver­sity any more just for knowl­edge."