# Educational gates in California
Date: 2026-06-06

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### Educational gates in California

So actually California is doing much worse than even the rest of America (or if you prefer [caste systems](https://medium.com/the-polis/are-impoverished-americans-a-caste-c06850244f04) doing much better).

![Data compiled by AI from segmental budgets for the 2026–2027 academic year.](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/educational-gates-in-california-55a541e5f5.png)
*Data compiled by AI from segmental budgets for the 2026–2027 academic year.*

A lot of the above cost comes from housing and food which is mostly the expensive housing in a college adjacent area.

![From here and other sources](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/educational-gates-in-california-5de28752af.png)
*From here and other sources*

Working through college was always very difficult, but now makes no sense with today’s much more competitive environments.

![Attrition profiles compiled from 2024–2026 reports by the National Student Clearinghouse, California Competes, PPIC, and Education Northwest](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/educational-gates-in-california-25e6fbe31a.png)
*Attrition profiles compiled from 2024–2026 reports by the National Student Clearinghouse, California Competes, PPIC, and Education Northwest*

Greater than 46% dropout rate far exceeds the national average of 33%.

Let’s look at the co-location requirements which cause almost half the financial strain.

![Increasingly liberal education](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/educational-gates-in-california-cf29df1104.png)
*Increasingly liberal education*

New online rules take affect July 1, 2026, and require formal reporting of students’ distance education status starting July 1, 2027. The federal government will make sure that online teachers are actively interacting with students in real time and so prevent fraudulent use of federal funding not meant for “correspondence education”.

How much of our ideas about education are twisted in with using it as a gate to our economy? For instance if you decry distance learning then do you prefer we go back to

> Teachers functioned as drillmasters, calling upon individual students to recite memorized passages from Greek, Latin, or moral philosophy texts, making “marks for merit” based on the student’s ability to repeat the text verbatim.

#### The origin of California higher education tuition

Before the Regents’ vote in 1970, the University of California had been tuition-free since its founding in 1868.

Ronald Reagan introduced tuition to prevent student unrest, arguing that it

> might affect those who are there really not to study but to agitate, it might make them think twice about paying a fee for the privilege of carrying a picket sign.

Tuition was the fascist solution to student protest, but it became the tip of the spear in the creation of an educational caste system.

Reagan also frequently compared campus radicals to Nazi brownshirts, arguing there was “no longer any room for appeasement.”

![Victory celebration for the 1966 Governor’s election](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/educational-gates-in-california-306ffccbaa.jpg)
*Victory celebration for the 1966 Governor’s election*

Fascism and education are fundamentally [opposed to each other](https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-rise-of-the-elite-anti-intellectuals/)

> At a broader level, socialists can learn from right-wing policy efforts: public university education is, in fact, a threat to conservative aspirations. As the political theorist Danielle Allen has shown, higher education corresponds to a greater degree of civic participation. Empowering working people by dismantling the financial barriers and debt burdens that keep them from that education is not just an extension of democracy, but part of a sound political strategy.

So gating education is a priority for many of the worst people ever.