San Jose State University Students Face More Economic Challenges Than Ever

San José State University statue honoring 1968 Olympic gold and bronze medal winners and SJSU student activists Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

I spoke to Sandra Huerta last week because the Metro, Silicon Valley’s weekly newspaper, asked me to write a piece about how the California State University’s current budget crisis is affecting SJSU students. The San Jose Mercury has published Associated Press feeds about the proposed 2011-2012 CSU budget cuts, which could be as high as $1 billion. The San Francisco Chronicle called their story, “CSU faces worst fiscal situation in its history.”

But no one is writing about the students and the challenges they’ve been dealt as the economy worsens.

I was lucky to find Sandra Huerta because she flies far beneath the radar screen of what’s considered news worthy. Twenty-year-old Huerta proudly talks about being the first one in her family to go to college. The Hayward High School graduate says she was involved with gangs and drugs until AP English and history classes got her thinking about college. The statue she saw on a visit to San Jose State University of Olympians Tommy Smith and John Carlos inspired her to enroll there as a Sociology major with a concentration in Community Change.

A scholarship got her a free freshman year, with dorm and books included, but decreases in financial aid sent her back home to her parents, a part time job and a long BART and bus commute so she could pay for her sophomore and junior years’ books and tuition.

Huerta, a McNair and Dean’s Scholar, MOSAIC Diversity Advocate Intern and Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlán (M.e.Ch.A) member, worries that more budget cuts means fewer of the classes she needs which could prevent her from graduating next year, keeping her from her dream of earning a PhD in Sociology and becoming a college professor.

Her life is so different than mine was when I attended SJSU in the 1970’s. Huerta lives with her family, works part time at a low wage job to help them and to supplement financial aid and spends a lot of time on public transportation to get to school and then back home to Hayward.

In my day there were a lot of jobs for Silicon Valley college students and the cost of living was so much lower than it is today that a whole generation of us got through without financial aid. We lived the American dream, living independently while we earned our ticket to the middle class.

I found a graveyard shift with the County’s Juvenile Probation Department that got me through. Earning about 130% of minimum wage paid for my tuition and whatever else I needed for college, a crappy car and my own room in the houses and apartments I shared with other students near campus. Others worked in the canneries or got on at one of the high tech companies.

Before they outsourced them offshore, dozens of companies like Hewlett Packard, Amdahl, National Semiconductor, Fairchild, Apple, Tandem, FMC, and Atari collectively had plenty of low wage jobs that high school graduates and college students qualified for at their local warehouses, distribution centers and production facilities. A low wage job doing manufacturing and pack out, quality assurance and testing, distribution or warehousing came with tuition benefits. Students used these benefits to pay for their business and engineering degrees and when they graduated they could easily transfer to higher paying jobs at their companies. Dozens of agencies provided temporary workers to Silicon Valley’s electronics industry. Starting out as a temp at these same high tech companies provided an “in” when permanent jobs opened up. This was common until the mid 1990’s.

Up until the mid 1980’s what’s now called Naglee Park was 100’s of large run-down houses surrounding the SJSU campus that students could afford to rent by the room. My boyfriend and I split the $75 a month rent to share a room in a converted garage on 15th street between Williams and San Fernando streets. OK, so the shower was real funky and the walls of our small room were dry wall. It was cheap and close to campus, so I stapled Indian bedspreads to the walls and we showered at school.

From there we went to an apartment near 6th and Williams streets that cost us $160 a month and was rent controlled by the city. When he left, I stayed, and because of the cheap rent, nine years later I was able to buy a little house in Willow Glen, one of San Jose’s most desirable neighborhoods.

That’s how it worked in Silicon Valley. Through SJSU’s job placement office I found paying internships that pimped up my resume and got me the on-campus job interviews that lead to a good job after graduation.

Students like Sandra Huerta probably can’t even imagine the financial independence and opportunities that were once the norm for most SJSU college students. Huerta, who maintains a 3.7 grade point average and is now a junior planning to graduate next year, says fewer sections of general education classes sent her to community college to get the classes she needed to stay on course for graduation. “They tell you that you can graduate in four years, but because it’s so expensive and not all classes are offered each semester it takes most students much longer. I have friends right now who have been at State for eight years trying to graduate because they can’t get the classes they need and they have to work more to pay for books and tuition increases, “ says Huerta. “They sometimes have to quit school to work to pay for the next semester, so a lot of students attend off and on. I’m on track to graduate in four years but if the classes I need aren’t offered when I need them, I’ll have postpone my graduation.”

“Every time they increase tuition and offer fewer sections of the classes students need students have to drop out”, says Huerta, “It’s usually working class and people of color but now that it’s affecting students who are higher up on the social ladder they’re calling this a crisis.”