Cal Poly to raise student fees in an attempt to increase racial diversity

March 8, 2022

President Jeffrey Armstrong

By Ben Di Guglielmo

After months of deliberation and open forums, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong announced on Monday that the San Luis Obispo based university would be adopting a measure to raise fees for future students. Beginning next year, tuition prices will increase by approximately $700 a year, every year until 2026.

“To avoid any misunderstanding, I want to be clear that this fee applies ONLY to students who are enrolling for the first time starting in Fall 2022,” Armstrong said in his announcement.

The increased fees will go mostly towards efforts to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in the student population by offering more scholarships and financial aid, according to the proposal. The university wishes to see the demographics of the student body “more closely resemble the state of California.”

The proposal would allocate 60% of newly raised funds towards scholarships and financial aid, the remaining 40% would go towards funding “Cal Poly’s unique, but higher-cost polytechnic, Learn by Doing academic programs.”

“The consultation process has been a good reminder for everyone that Cal Poly can dream big dreams, can have robust discussion and debate about both ends and means for achieving those dreams, and can take bold action after due consideration,” Armstrong added.


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Armstrong’s is a liar and is incompetent. “more closely resemble California”. What? As of last year, 24% of engineering students were from out of state. If you want the campus to more resemble California, he can start by allowing more California students to attend Cal Poly. Armstrong bloated the admin and gave all hefty raises to the admin as well. Sounds good, but it’s a total lie.


Additionally, it’s Armstrong’s job to bring in money. Cal Poly just told us they brought in $800,000,000. Where did that money go? Stupid question, because it was not really money as we all know: it was mostly useless equipment or software that companies got a full tax write-off for. The average professor, who is also responsible for teaching classes, brought more money to Cal Poly than Armstrong does. Armstrong is going after students to pay for his excesses, the low hanging fruit in this issue. Wow! Hitting students up for money? Is that really what we pay Armstrong $600k/year for? I could have thought of that idea.


Lastly, Cal Poly got a big load of pandemic money… what happened to that? Total lack of transparency; always has been and always will be.


Racial profiling to fight racism. Sounds par for the course.


Total !!BULLSHIT !! Cal Poly and all the other left run schools don’t give a damn about equality for students they just want more money to further their racist agenda


The fantasy land that these Gov. institutions and their well intentioned administrators live in is beyond belief sometimes.


How ridiculous, they are going to charge white kids $700 a year more to try and bribe kids of color to come there. How about the over paid president and professors take a pay cut. This is simply a reparations charge to the white kids who have nothing to do with the incompetence of staff.


Jon, professors with Doctorates at Cal Poly make 1/3 of what our sherrif makes here, and he has an associates degree making 300k. Most professors there work a SECOND job at Cuesta to make ends meet. Cops make more than professors around here with BLOATED disgusting salaries like police and fire chiefs taking in six figures a year as if they’re neurosurgeons. Why not get rid of your pennies from heaven pension and donate it locally as it’s stolen money?


The university wishes to see the demographics of the student body “more closely resemble the state of California.”


When I attended Cal Poly as an Ag major in 1967, the school was entirely white, with only a handful of Hispanics, while the population in the area was probably evenly divided between whites and Hispanics.


In fact, most of the people who did the farm work in those days were Hispanic. Nothing has changed, except now Cal Poly is offering more scholarships to the children of those workers who are the backbone of this nation. I believe a raise in fees to accomplish this goal is definitely warranted.


There’s zero depth to your logic. I attended Cal Poly in 76 thru 77, then dropped out to make 100k then up to 200k at Diablo. There were plenty of Latinos at Diablo making the same amount as me without a college degree. The youngest Senior Reactor Operator at Diablo in 1983 had the last name of Navarro.

When I took SAT test at SLO High School in 1975 with every other SLO County area high school kids, there were hardly any Latinos taking the SAT, but all of my asian friends took the SAT test that day. That tells me the Latinos didn’t have the resources to send their kids to pay for dorms and tuition. I was an “A” student and gave the commencement speech at HS graduation. I got one token $1000 scholarship out of the dozen I applied for with my good grades and white skin. My folks never made over $30k a year and couldn’t give me a dime toward Cal Poly. I own a ranch now without a college degree, but I worked rotating shift for 22 years and got up a 4:30am for dayshifts the rest of my years 36 years operating the grid. How much entitlement other than dropping the SAT test requirement, terminating gifted child programs and giving racial scholarships do you want to give out if the Latino’s family financial support system can’t get their kids to the end-zone? There is satisfaction and reward in all trades with productive work, with or without a college degree.


Cal poly is going to be only the wealthiest students who can afford to subsidize the poor ones. I’m skeptical this change will achieve the changes they want. And this isn’t going to lead to a significantly better learning experience. Is this CP trying to get in the woke bandwagon? Is this out of guilt for the black face and other dumb incidents? Just like how the govt tries to break down how it spends your money, I would like to see CP disclose where it’s fees go so people can decide it’s overpriced.


Blatant racial bias by imposing monetary offset penalties. When did voters or state politicians pass bills that allow or promote Colleges charging their students to social engineer racial quotas?


Social Engineering, very appropriate!


Hmmm.if this fee is not just for your freshman year, then CP gets $3.5M the first year, about $14M the second year, and about $56M by the final year and it continues in perpetuity! Seems like a lot of money for this racial and socioeconomic plan. Why not make it more affordable for all students?