A private college in Arizona is charging a mandatory fee to all students in order to fund a scholarship for the education of undocumented immigrants, a move that has been embraced by advocates but slammed by others as irresponsible and unfair to other students.
$30 has been added by Prescott College to its annual tuition fee of $28,000 in order to establish a scholarship fund for students who are undocumented immigrants, a policy suggested by faculty members and students from the Social Justice and Human Rights Master of Arts and undergraduate divisions. Supporters claim it helps people who need it most and takes aim at the “discriminatory politics” for which the state has gained a reputation.
However, the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal & Judicial Studies Legal Fellow, Andrew Kloster, says the move is a “slap in the face” to ordinary students already struggling at a time when the student loan debt in the United States is over a trillion US dollars and tells the College’s potential donors that the administration is more concerned with making political statements than good financial management.
Kloster’s condemnation has been echoed by the Center for Immigration Studies’ director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, who says that precedence should be being given to students who are legal citizens with financial difficulties rather than undocumented immigrants. Vaughan described it as “beyond absurd” to force every student to subsidize the education of an undocumented immigrant when many Americans cannot afford to go to college.