The first time I took the loop bus down Heller Drive, it stopped at an apartment complex with such dilapidated exteriors that I couldn’t understand why UC Santa Cruz hadn’t repaired them yet. A group of kids boarded here, their feet swinging from seats too high for them to touch the floor. I thought about how cute they were taking public transit by themselves, and figured that they were children of professors heading home from an after-school program.
It wasn’t until my second year, when I was reporting on the forced relocation of these apartments and their impending rent hike, that I realized student families actually lived here.
Behind the neglected facade, I walked through pathways filled with colorful toys shared by residents. Palestinian flags hung from windows. The retaining garden walls were falling down, and sandbags still surrounded chronically flooded apartments, but the kids here got to constantly play with each other, all while watching their parents courageously organize to demand better living conditions.
Reporting on Family Student Housing made me realize the depth of diversity at this school, and also think more critically about my linear educational journey. I was privileged enough to go straight from high school to college without even questioning why I was doing so. 
Signage of Sammy the Slug with a military helmet is displayed on the outside of the Veteran’s Resource Center.
However, there are many students with unique pathways to UCSC, referred to as non-traditional students. They include, but are not limited to, students who are veterans, parents, financially independent or older than 25. For non-traditional students in particular, college can represent a significant opportunity to pursue the career and life they desire.
Yet because of the Trump administration and financial cuts to the UC system, we risk losing the ideal of an accessible and equalizing higher education.
This summer, Lorena Rodriguez, director of the financial aid and scholarship office at UCSC, went to Washington, D.C. and met with California representatives to fight for changes to the Trump-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“It is my personal mission to ensure that students make it through this, because they are sacrificing a lot just to be back in school,” Rodriguez said.
The bill would make student loan repayment plans less flexible and more burdensome. It also proposes eliminating the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, which aids the cost of running on-campus childcare centers like UCSC’s Early Education Services and subsidizes additional off-campus childcare costs.
Eighty-seven percent of student parents nationwide qualify for federal childcare assistance, and UCSC alone received $500,000 in CCAMPIS funding for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
“Childcare is such a big thing for student parents,” said Krystle Pale, who served as the president of UCSC’s Student Parent Organization. “If that gets impacted, we’re not able to get childcare. We’re not going to be able to get an education, and we’re not going to be able to do anything.”
On top of paying for tuition and childcare, basic needs deficits also highly impact non-traditional students. Twenty-two percent of California student parents utilize food stamps, more than twice the rate of non-parenting students. While veteran students receive a housing benefit, the high cost of living in Santa Cruz often means that it doesn’t cover rent for a two-bedroom family apartment. This November, the distribution of food stamps and military benefits were delayed because of the government shutdown.
Still, UCSC has many spaces for non-traditional students that other schools lack, like campus food pantries with parenting supplies, a robust work-study program, resource centers housed under the Services for Transfer, Re-entry and Resilient Scholars program and a financial aid office that works to connect with non-traditional students personally.
Melody Gonzalez, a third-year financially independent student, has benefited from Slug Support’s security loan deposit program. However, she has noticed that it has become increasingly difficult for the Smith Society, which serves former foster care students like her, to provide their essential social and networking support.
“As much as I’ve been talking about all the benefits, all of it is at risk right now under this administration,” Gonzalez said. “Finally we’ve been able to help more and more non-traditional students reach that level of higher education that they want, but it is under threat. We risk losing that ability, that accessibility for non-traditional students.”
As UCSC is being attacked by a hostile presidential administration on one front, it’s also being pressured by the effects of state-mandated corporatization and a structural budget deficit. UCSC students see this all too well in our overburdened student services, unaffordable housing market and ever-increasing tuition.
Corporatization and budget constraints are turning higher education from a public good into a private commodity available only to those willing to take on debt or pay in full. While access to this commodity means that you have a chance to get ahead in an unequal world, the commercialization of college is degrading its value.
Krystle Pale has a different vision of what college is truly meant to be.
“Education is more than just a degree to get a job,” she said. “It’s a way of empowerment, it’s a way of opening doors, not just for yourself but for your community, your family and your kids.”
Non-traditional students especially exemplify and even add to this power of education.
Hugh Leonard, for example, is a Ph.D. student in the ecology and evolutionary biology department, who made his way to UCSC after dropping out of high school and being unhoused.
“It brings something different in terms of your understanding to why you are pursuing this education,” Leonard said about being a non-traditional student. “Talking with students when I was here, they’re exposed not only to people who are doing the same kind of ‘traditional’ pathway. They’re like, ‘Oh, there’s other ways of life, other experiences out there.’”
I’m worried that the Trump administration will successfully degrade this diversity in colleges, and that the corporatization of higher education will create a world in which learning is only for a select few. Education should be expansive, explorative and transformative.
Every time we walk into a classroom, we should leave with a better understanding of the world.
That is what education is meant to be. And it is only possible when it is protected for all.
