Featuring the winners of our studentcam documentary competition. Middle and high school asked the question, what issued you most issues do you most want 2020 candidates to address . Our second prize goes to night ninth graders from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in long beach, california, where cspan is available through spectrum. Their winning entry is titled, opportunity for all. We want president ial candidates to talk about tuition should be free. We chose this topic because we believe education is important to our future. Opportunity, who gets it in america . Is it something reserved just for those at the top . Opportunity. Opportunity, for every one of our kids. And i underline every one of our kids, to get a first rate education. You have kids coming out with 100,000 or 200,000 of student debt and they cant survived we are taking away opportunities from them and that is wrong. Statistics show when they have the opportunity to go to college, even if they dont go through that, they have a whole different horizon of opportunities. The student debt crisis is overall in the nation. 1. 5 trillion dollars in debt and more than 16. 8 million are under the age of 30. We visited the Cal State University chancellor to get their opinion on free tuition. I had about two to three jobs when i was in college. So if it would have been free, i wouldve had more opportunity and more time to focus on my academics. When they leave college, they have more purchasing power. People with more purchasing power drive the economy. And so, people are waiting longer to have children. They are waiting longer to buy houses. They are waiting around for a lot of things because they have debt that theyre carrying over. Access for all. Access for anyone wants to learn and spend time in a Higher Education institution is really important. Weve done studies with students over 18 and are waiting from high school, there still in an phase where there is a whole phase of developing after high school. This is an opportunity in college to expand their minds and their Critical Thinking skills to be more productive members of society. After listening to the pros and benefits, and if you concerns to providing tuition free. Public universities already feel underfunded. So if it became free, i would worry that public universities would be very hard for them to maintain the level of competitiveness and the quality they are able to provide now. And that over time, the disparity between how good an education you would get at a public versus private institution might become, the gap might become really big and unfair. There has to be some type of caret, thats either throughout the time that students are there in the program, because some might not necessarily feel as invested if its 100 free. F you like there has to be some thought in terms of whats keeping students in college . Right now, we dont have the resources to pay for what a lot of politicians are promising, unless we really radically change the tax structure. Thats going to mean that people have more wealth will saddle up more of the burden because that is where more of the many lies. Money lays. Its a great idea but unless we do something to change the income flows to our government, our government wont have the funds to be able to do that. According to u. S. News world report, the United States leads the world in economic power, military spending and technologies. So, why cant we lead the world in providing Free Education . In all of our interviews, we asked, do you know of any countries that provide Free Education and if so, how did they offer it . So, i lived in europe and most european universities are free. So, their taxes are covering that. Thats their commitment, but not everybody goes to university. In many industrialized countries, more advanced societies, particularly tuition is kept low. Its kept affordable. And i think that if it isnt free, they try to create support structures and economic packages to encourage people to go to the university. Some countries where there is more public support for education, there are different tax structures. So, there are countries that have more of a flat tax. And so when you have a flat tax, lets say you want pay a penny on every dollar. If you pay 10, you pay . 10. If you make 10 million you pay a lot more in taxes than something else. Especially in high school, this topic is very important to us. We will face this crisis firsthand where debt is negatively affecting many. At the college of fort ability crisis reaches a fever pitch, we wanted to take a step back and look at the free college movement. Essentially, you saw after the 2016 election, when a lot of people thought Hillary Clinton was going to win, and then you get a donald trump presidency, and all of that momentum that had been building since 2005 just stops. Until we have politicians that makes education and Public Education particularly a priority, in other words were not investing as much in people. Theyre being reactive to problems in society and in the world, as opposed to trying to create a better future. If we inform people now throw our future president ial candidates, we can help future generations have the freedom to a Higher Education and a career they enjoy. You can watch each winning studentcam documentary online at studentcam. Org. Governors held briefings today on their response to the coronavirus outbreak. Well show several, starting with new york oven or andrew cuomo. He was followed by john bel edwards, announcing a task force looking at Racial Disparities emerging, and looking at this weekends Weather Forecast for louisiana. After that, Virginia Governor ralph northam. Now, governor cuomo