Prepaid College Tuition Plan

Your editorial (“With College Costs Sky-High, It’s Time for a Savings Plan,” May 11) criticizing my prepaid college tuition plan is a blow to thousands of Californians who want college costs to be affordable to their children.

My legislation guarantees future college fees to families, churches, unions, or any entity that invests in a prepayment plan at today’s college rates. The bill contains safeguards of the fund’s integrity.

States like Florida, Texas, and Michigan have adopted this guarantee plan while California has dawdled. The plans are solvent and successful. Your own story (May 5) acknowledges that “experts confirm [Hayden’s] assessment.”

You instead endorse a tax-free saving plan which is an incentive to higher education to raise fees. For example, national studies show that universities generally raise fees every time student aid funding goes up.

The Times says to families: Save all you can, and good luck affording your children’s education. Instead we need to guarantee the right to affordable education to any California child who gets good grades.

State SEN. TOM HAYDEN

D-Los Angeles

Re “Bills Would Start College Saving Plan,” May 5: Before the state Legislature gets into an unwanted “bidding contest” on higher education giveaways, both Democrats and Republicans need to address one protracted, emotionally sensitive issue, happily within their powers to adjust, in my lifetime.

For more than three decades, citizens have heard the following unchallenged mantra from professional educationists on college/ university campuses: Get a degree and lifetime prosperity inevitably results. I’m here with a response: Educationists are without adequate clothing, in public.

There is no such guarantee in either private or public employment. Ask any unemployed or overqualified college graduate seeking work these days.

DAVID C. PHILLIPS

Bakersfield