Blog 5 :)

Ideas for my position paper are college costs rising or lab grown meat.
College Costs Rising
I received a letter in the mail from MiraCosta this week. It was financial aid papers to fill out. However the headline on the paper, in bold writing says “NOTICE: It is almost certain that the legislature will adopt a higher enrollment fee for the fall term. If a fee increase in enacted by the state, you will be required to pay the additional fees.” For those of you who don’t know there are two figures being thrown out for community college price increase. One is $2, making the price per credit $22. The other is $6, making the price per credit $26. Both might not seem like a lot on their own, but take someone with a full load of 18 credits and their tuition just jumped from $360 to $468! Why the difference of the two increases? The $2 increase would just cover the school, barely. It would be enough to pay the bills basically. The $6 increase would help regain some of the things the community colleges have already lost. Did you know MiraCosta isn’t offering some of their courses at the moment? Not because no one will teach, but because there isn’t enough money in the budget for them. An example would be Music 108, Music for Elementary School Teacher. Many students are interested in this course, but it has not been offered in over a year! It is hard to know what to do in a situation like this, but I would have to side with an increase. My bank account would be hurting like everyone else’s, but there is comfort in knowing that even at the high suggestion of $26 California community college students will still pay less per credit than any other state. I think the increase is needed to make the quality of going to school here as great s I expect my college experience to be. I couldn’t expect to go to a nicely kept school, that offers many courses I’m interested in and offers a variety of extra curricular activities, if I wasn’t willing to help fun some of these things in some way. Keeping in mind these budget cuts have also greatly affected the Cal State and University of California systems. Both of them are accepting a lower rate of students and therefore expecting a higher GPA from transfer students. Class sizes have been greatly reduced. Students at Cal State san Marcos have felt the brunt of this when the school issued a new policy for credits per seamster to be dropped to only 13 credits!!! This makes it difficult for students to register in the classes they want and not graduate as quickly as they like.

LAB-GROWN MEAT
Lab grown meat interests me as a topic as it is something being developed quickly. It’s not that scientists can’t grow meat.. it is just the texture and taste still need to be perfected. As a vegetarian I am very interested in this topic. This isn’t a soy product, it is real meat, only grown in a test tube in a laboratory. The benefits of this would be astounding. It would help our environment, create new kinds of jobs, stop farm animal cruelty, and greatly improve the environment. I find it fascinating that in 10 years lab grown meat might be the only kin of meat you will be able to purchase at the super market and would like to research the benefits of this more so it could be a possibility for my paper.