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Abhishu Rawka

ENGL 133

Dr. Jason Peters

13 March 2018

Cal Poly Opportunity Grant

Cal Poly administration has proposed an increase to out-of-state students’ fees to fund a

grant to help incoming low-income California students. The Cal Poly Opportunity Grant (CPOG)

will help pay Cal Poly fees for incoming California-resident students who meet specific low-

income qualifications. Even though the goal of this grant may be noble, I strongly believe, its

execution is misguided. To accumulate the money needed to sustain this grant, Cal Poly

President Jeffrey Armstrong proposed the Cal Poly Opportunity Fee (CPOF) to be applied to

incoming out-of-state students. The fee would begin as $2,010 per year for out-of-state students,

either starting their freshman year or transferring to Cal Poly in Fall 2018. The fee would then

increase by that amount for each new year. Freshmen starting in Fall 2019 would pay $4,020 per

year and freshmen starting in 2020 would pay $6,030 per year. Students starting in 2021 and

beyond would pay $8,040 per year. In my opinion, placing the entirety of the responsibility of

diversification on out-of-state students who already pay around double in-state tuition is

ridiculous. Funding could either be appropriated from other existing sources of revenue or could

be levied on the entire student body. This, in general, is just not my opinion, in fact, a lot of

mustangs think the same.

Rama Adajian in an interview for Mustang News article, ‘Out-of-state student fee’

published on February 13th 2018, said, “If [Cal Poly] is raising the tuition for 15% of its

students, one would think 85% of people would vote ‘Yes’ on this poll since it would benefit
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them. The irony is that 85% of people voted ‘No’ on this poll, including in-state students.”

According to the Cal Poly Opportunity Grant and Fee website, the four main challenges,

Cal Poly wants to counter with the introduction of Cal Poly Opportunity Fee are- Lack of

diversity, Most expensive public university, Educational equity and Career Readiness. I think it’s

the biggest irony that Cal Poly is trying to increase diversity by taking steps which will hurt the

diversity of the out of state students. Out-of-state students already pay fees significantly higher

than the amount paid by in-state students. The increased out-of-state tuition already serves as a

major factor in dissuading potential out-of-state students from choosing Cal Poly over any

university in their respective state. The extra financial burden from this fee would only push

these students further away. This will likely result in the additional refining of the out-of-state

students attending Cal Poly and hence increasing lack of diversity. Similarly, the other

challenges our university is trying to overcome do not add up in themselves to form something

more meaningful. Increasing tuition just to make Cal Poly cheaper isn’t logical at all. I do not

understand how will Cal Poly maintain Educational Equity by taking away chances of other

students. Career readiness for someone who has studied in a diverse environment is only possible

if the first three challenges are successfully countered, which does not seem to get accomplished

with the guidance Cal Poly is currently receiving.

I’m among those students who think Cal Poly Opportunity Grant should become a thing

but it should not get funded from Cal Poly Opportunity Fee. Many Cal Poly students have been

very expressive about how they feel the same. For example, a business administration junior

Neda Jamaly said in her interview with Sabrina Pascua for an article, ‘With conclusion of open

forums about Cal Poly Opportunity Fee, student responses remain mixed’ published in Mustang

News on March 12, 2018 that, she feels that the fee proposal will only create more tensions for
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minority students.

“As a minority student, I think we defend ourselves enough on this campus,” Jamaly

said. She added, “When people know they are paying for other people, it’s not going to make

them empathetic to that situation or that person’s situation. They are just going to feel frustrated

that, ‘I’m sitting here paying for my tuition, but I’m also paying yours.’” This is why I believe

that making just out-of-state students pay for others is highly unethical.

We have been discussing whether doing this is good or bad. But now I want to draw our

attention to whether this should be granted or not. According to Cal Poly Opportunity Grant

Objective Statement - 42.5% of the CPOF would go to the proposed Cal Poly Opportunity Grant

(CPOG) for low-income students, 21.25% would go to support services for students receiving

the CPOG, 21.25% would go to Cal Poly, and 15% would go to the Chancellor’s office”

While Cal Poly fees in the past have not designated a percentage of funds to the Cal Poly general

fund or to the CSU Chancellor’s Office and instead all revenue was designated toward fee-

specific goals, the current proposal designates 21.25% of CPOF revenue to the Cal Poly general

fund and 15% to the CSU Chancellor’s Office! This is wrong! This is straight up deceiving

everyone who is supporting this cause for a noble reason, and charging out-of-state students a lot

of money in the name of a good cause and using it for other purposes which are not accountable

to anyone.

Students already contribute to the Cal Poly General Fund through payment of tuition, and

thus should not be required to pay additional money into the general fund through a fee designed

and marketed as a source of support for low-income students, and while the CPOF is marketed as

benefitting low-income Cal Poly students, these designations send a combined 36.25% of CPOF

funds to resources that do not specifically relate to CPOG recipients. Cal Poly is trying to
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improve its lack of diversity at the cost of diversity. In an article, ‘The welfare effects of

discriminating between in-state and out-of-state students’ written by Malte Hübner he discusses

how almost all the universities all over America have a ratio of out-of-state tuition fees to in-state

tuition of something between 2.4 to 2.6. Considering current in-state fees and out-of-state and

international fees, Cal Poly has a ratio of 2.47 already! Adding $8000 in the name of Cal Poly

Opportunity Fee will make this ratio to go to 3.32! This does not make any sense at all!

To conclude, I would just say the Cal Poly Opportunity Grant is a very empathetic cause

and soon should become a big thing, but Cal Poly Opportunity Fee should not be passed by our

administration. I myself am an out-of-state student, I know how hard it is trying to pay for every

unit I have to study at Cal Poly, and adding extra $8000 is almost equal to the entire tuition my

fellow in-state mustangs pay at college in an annual year which is unethical. In the similar

mustang news article published on February 13, 2018, Molly Saloman said, “The inexpensive

tuition for out of state students is one of the biggest driving factors behind me coming to Cal

Poly and also for me not graduating with crippling amounts of student debt like too many

[people] in the country...” This is how most of the out of state students everywhere in the world

feels like. There are many alternative measures Cal Poly can implement to gather the funds to

cover the Grant. Other than saving energy resources on campus, and asking our alumni base for

donations, Cal Poly can follow other money models to pull out money without pressuring some

part of its student population. One of the good examples is the Futuros Model discussed by

Jenkins, A Francesca in her article, ‘Futuros Models Helping Low-Income Immigrant Students.’

Another good example is of students of College of the Ozarks in Missouri, where those kids

work for their education and pay nothing. These are good ways to get public funding or figuring

out a work plan for the students in need and should be totally doable by us.
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Works Cited

Hübner, Malte. "The welfare effects of discriminating between in-state and out-of-state

students." Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 42, Issues 1–2, 2012, Pages

364-374, ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S 016604621

1000755?via%3Dihub.

Jenkins, A. F. "Futuros Models Helping Low-Income Immigrant Students." The Hispanic

Outlook in Higher Education, May 04 2009: 30-1. ProQuest.

https://search.proquest.com/docview/219226479?accountid=10362&rfr_id=info%3Axri

%2Fsid%3Aprimo.

Marquardt, Rachel. “Administration Proposes Fee for out-of-State Students to Fund Low-Income

in-State Students.” Mustang News, Mustang News, 7 Feb. 2018, mustangnews.net/admin

istration-proposes-adding-fee-state-students-fund-grant-low-income-state-students/.

Pascua, Sabrina. “With Conclusion of Open Forums about Cal Poly Opportunity Fee, Student

Responses Remain Mixed.” Mustang News, Mustang News, 12 Mar. 2018, mustangnews

.net/conclusion-open-forums-cal-poly-opportunity-fee-student-responses-remain-mixed/.