IRVINE, Calif. — If campus activism still brings to mind peace signs, a sea of white faces and liberal strongholds like Berkeley , meet Jesse Cheng. Cheng is a third-year Asian-American studies major at the University of California , Irvine, a campus less than five decades old in the middle of Orange County , a place of strip malls and subdivisions that gave birth to the ultraconservative John Birch Society . Comfortable talking with both administrators and anarchists, Cheng is a presence at protests but avoids getting arrested. He doesn’t want to put his graduation at risk or upset his mother, who worked hard to get him here and worries for his safety because she witnessed what happened to dissidents in her native China . Cheng is part of a growing movement of minority students rallying around a new cause — fighting a budget crisis that’s undermining access to higher education at a time when students of color have become a stronger demographic force. “For a lot of students of color, this is our dream and our hope — to get to college,” said Cheng, who is about to start a one-year term representing students from all 10 University of California campuses on the system’s board of regents. “We never thought we’d make it and we’re here. And we’re not going to give it up so easily.” While talk about a rebirth of student activism surfaces every few years whenever sweatshop labor or some other cause draws a decent crowd, some observers believe organizing around threats to higher education has the potential to grow into something big, maybe even a national movement. But a visit to a developing activist hotspot like UC-Irvine — where tensions have run high this year over everything from student tuition hikes to gender-neutral bathrooms and Middle East politics — illustrate the challenges involved. The increased diversity of students, many of them the first in their families to attend college, is both a strength and a liability. Splits have emerged over tactics and agendas, making coalition-building more challenging than ever. “It’s a very diverse group, a lot of students of color, which makes it more difficult to organize,” said Alejandra Ocasio, a fourth-year student from San Diego active in a Hispanic campus student association. “We all have our own interests. It can be difficult to reconcile those things.” At 27,000-student UC-Irvine, the scene includes a Pakistani-American working behind the scenes on budget issues as her own financial aid disappears, a Filipino-American struggling to shake fellow Asian students from political apathy and a gay African-American activist who thinks the focus on student fees obscures larger problems like the evils of capitalism. The fact that students of color are at the forefront of campus protests marks a significant shift, said Arthur Levine, a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York who has studied student activism. “In the past, minorities have tended to provide leadership for the minority protests,” Levine said. “Now they’ve moved to center stage. They’re leading the protests.” On a recent morning, Cheng led a quick tour of activism at UC-Irvine. Here, he explained, is the designated “free-speech zone” in front of the administration building. About 1,000 people, a big crowd for a campus often maligned as apathetic, crowded onto the steps and filled an area between two flagpoles on March 4, a national day of college student demonstrations against tuition hikes and program cuts. “Everyone was silent,” Cheng recalled. “It felt more like a lecture. I mean, it was a great moment — a teaching moment. But it wasn’t a punch-you-in-the-face kind of deal.” Therein lies one challenge to organizing a movement around budget issues: a massive fee increase like the one UC students are facing this year is painful and personal. But it’s not as visceral as, say, the Vietnam War , which was a matter of life and death for students of the 60s and 70s facing the draft. “Our crisis is different — and our demographics are very different,” Cheng said. The March 4 Day of Action for Public Education began as a California-only event, a sequel to fall demonstrations against the state Board of Regents’ decision to boost UC undergraduate fees, the equivalent of tuition this fall by 32% for in-state students. The $2,500 fee hike brings UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges. Despite no real organization, the protest spread nationwide. Most demonstrations were peaceful, although protesters threw punches and ice chunks in Milwaukee and shut down a major freeway in Oakland, during rush-hour traffic. It’s no accident that California, with its ethnic diversity and severe budget problems, is the epicenter of revived activism, said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism who teaches at the City University of New York. The momentum building over budget problems, Johnston said, “speaks to the demographic transformation of the student body. In the 1960s, the average student was coming from a family of means, someone who was white, male, with a history of academic achievement in the family. In 2010, none of those things are as likely.” Johnston said the combination of students of lesser means taking on greater loans and American public higher education buckling under diminished state support and recession is a recipe for greater student engagement. In California, Cheng is joined in the cause by first-generation minority college students such as Victor Sanchez, who attends the University of California, Santa Cruz and leads the University of California Student Association. “It’s more than just fighting for what’s morally right,” said Sanchez, who has a Mexican father and Costa Rican mother and describes fighting for access to honors programs and Advanced Placement courses in high school. “It’s righting the wrongs of our own experiences, the stuff we’ve gone through, for our brothers and sisters and generations after.” Like much contemporary student activism, Sanchez and Cheng combine direct action and lobbying. Their pragmatism leads them to meet with administrators to press causes such as preserving the Cal Grant program for low-income students and boosting financial aid for their undocumented peers. But Sanchez also sees value in standing apart when the moment is right — like when he was kicked out of the state Capitol after staging a “study-in.” The point was to call attention to diminishing state support that has led to fee increases, staff furloughs and program cuts at a system considered the jewel of American public higher education. “For me, it’s most effective to have one foot in and one foot out,” Sanchez said. “What’s the point of addressing the powers that be if you don’t meet with them? We have to be a thorn in their sides and strong enough to advocate without losing our position.” At UC-Irvine, capturing students’ attention is another challenge shaped by cultural currents. Many Asian and Asian-American students, who are by far the largest racial group on campus at 47% of the student body, come from more moderate to conservative families and shy from political action, said Justine Calma, who became involved in campus activism by co-chairing a Filipino student organization. “Who isn’t opposed to a 32% fee increase?” Calma said one recent afternoon at the university’s Cross-Cultural Center, or “The Cross,” a gathering spot for minority student activists. “It’s not really a contentious issue. To see just a few of us come out … I fight for every handful.” UC-Irvine’s year of tumult is catalogued in messages scrawled in chalk on campus sidewalks and stairwells. “Free Gaza,” reads one. “Funeral for Education” says another. Then there is the more benign, “Good luck on your midterms.” The university has long been a hotbed of Muslim-Jewish tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the latest flare-up, 11 students, afterward known as the “Irvine 11″ were arrested in February for repeatedly interrupting a talk by Michael Oren , Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Next came the “Irvine 17,” a group staging a sit-in with a list of a dozen demands ranging from gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to disarming police officers of Tasers. Restoring budget cuts was on the list, too. A group that included members of the Radical Student Union, a group of self-described anarchists and Marxists, occupied the library to protest reduced hours. Then, on May 4, students dressed in black staged a mock “Funeral for Education” complete with a wooden coffin. Some longtime activists, minority students among them, are wary of focusing too narrowly on the higher-education budget crisis. Ryan Davis, a gay African-American student and one of the Irvine 17, said rising student fees are just a symptom of the larger problem of a “racist, hetero-normative, capitalist structure we want to take down by any means necessary.” To Davis, that flawed structure allows for curriculum that glosses over minority contributions, campus workers not extended job protections and student bodies that don’t reflect the state’s diversity well enough. “We’re just trying to make sure that’s highlighted and we’re not just washing over that in all the rhetoric over fee hikes,” said Davis, of San Diego. Yet Davis said he doesn’t see student activists who work with administrators and elected officials on the budget crisis as enemies. And work-within-the-system students like Sarah Bana say they need students like Davis. “If Ryan doesn’t yell at people and tell them what is wrong, I can’t say, ‘Here is one little way you can fix it,’” said Bana, executive vice president of Associated Students of UC-Irvine, the undergraduate student government. A Pakistani-American whose father is a wholesale jeweler in downtown Los Angeles, Bana said the budget crisis drew her into activism. She receives both Pell and Cal Grants for low-income students. Over the last three years her financial aid was cut in half. An extra roommate recently moved into her apartment to save another $100 a month in rent. Manuel Gomez, UC-Irvine’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said the efforts of student leaders such as Cheng and Bana have already made a difference. He pointed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘s recent promise to veto any state budget that does not include more money for higher education as a gesture that might not have happened without student protests. “There’s traction here, real traction,” Gomez said. “This affects children. It affects children’s futures … My question is, ‘Is the vision compelling enough to sustain itself beyond reducing fees?’ Is has to go beyond anger.” With the mass actions from two months ago fading from memory, attention now shifts to a high-stakes California budget revision this month. Higher education’s share hangs in the balance. The next student regent for the UC system, the friend to radicals and administrators alike, has three simple goals moving forward: to get students into college, make them feel safe there and get them out with a degree. “I definitely think this is the birth of something,” Cheng said. “I’m not sure what the something is yet.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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Cam Holmes graduated from Tulsa Community College on Friday – and she says that, but for a program created three years ago, she never would have done so. In 2007, the year she graduated from high school, Tulsa Community College created Tulsa Achieves , which waives tuition for many local residents. That year, Holmes was among 1,357 first-time freshmen from local high schools who participated. Overall, first-time freshmen enrollment at the college rose by nearly 400 students from the year prior. College officials attribute this steep enrollment growth to the program, arguing that it has attracted many students to the college who otherwise would not have considered it an option for them. TUITION-FREE: Military, engineering, specialty colleges stand ground against costs BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010 “I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college or even if I could have gone to college,” said Holmes, 21. “My G.P.A. wasn’t that high, and I just didn’t apply myself in the way that I do now.” Holmes credits Tulsa Achieves with giving her direction – she plans to transfer to Oklahoma State University in the fall, and to major in broadcast journalism – as well as the finances to afford her first two years of college. She already qualified for Pell Grants, but Tulsa Achieves took care of the remainder of her costs. She said that the program has changed some of her neighbors’ mindsets about attending college. “Some of them feel a different attitude about college and importance of it,” Holmes said. “I know I’ve talked to some people who are new to the program, and they kind of had the same situation I had – people came out of high school not knowing what they want to do.” At a time when community colleges are being urged to attract and to graduate more students, Tulsa Achieves suggests that price matters — even with relatively low-cost institutions. But it also shows that community colleges may be able to waive tuition for many students without breaking the bank. Through a mixture of financial aid, private donations and state support, college officials say they have found a way to make up for the tuition these students would have paid, all while providing access for hundreds more students, boosting retention rates and further diversifying their campus. While tuition at the college – about $1,100 for a full-time semester of four courses – is relatively low, the effort suggests not only that there may be a critical mass of students for whom any tuition may be a hindrance but also that these students can succeed. ON THE WEB: Honors programs booming at 2-year colleges INSIDE HIGHER ED: Community colleges offer classes in ‘graveyard shift’ The college is the largest two-year institution in Oklahoma, serving about 27,000 students per semester. After state and federal financial aid is applied, the “gap-funding program” pays any remaining tuition balance for up to 63 credit hours for eligible students. Only Tulsa residents who graduate from a public or private high school or home school with a 2.0 grade point average qualify. To maintain Tulsa Achieves funding, students must retain county residency, take an orientation class within their first year, complete 40 hours of volunteer service each academic year and stay in “good academic standing.” They must earn at least a 1.7 GPA when they have 30 credit hours or less and at least a 2.0 GPA when they have 31 credit hours or more. Furthermore, they must complete at least three credit hours each semester and complete at least 70% of all of their attempted coursework. The requirements reflect a number of the hot ideas in the discussion about community colleges’ “completion agenda”: that many students need to be taught to study, that efforts to connect students to the college in multiple ways are key to retention, and that avoiding missed semesters is key. Localized programs that help high school students cover the cost of college tuition, like Tulsa Achieves, are not new. For example, Kalamazoo Promise , a program in Michigan that is funded by a small group of anonymous donors, has helped more than 1,100 of the city’s public school graduates pay their tuition at any institution in the state since it began in 2005. Despite the success of such privately funded ventures, it is often hard for public entities such as local governments or colleges to establish and maintain similar tuition-waiver programs. Voters in Davenport, Iowa, for instance, rejected a program last year that would have given each of the city’s high school graduates a lump sum of $20,000 for use at any college or university of their choosing. Tulsa Community College officials said, however, that they have found such an effort affordable. To help maximize federal and state aid awards before institutional funds are used to pay for tuition, Tulsa Achieves students are required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Aside from this aid, the cost of Tulsa Achieves is kept down by students who qualify for Oklahoma’s Promise , a statewide program that waives public college tuition for those who come from families that earn less than $50,000 a year. The effort led to an immediate gain in Pell Grant funds, which increased by 50% in the program’s first year, to $450,000 — as more students enrolled and more applied for aid. Overall, the college is only paying full tuition for about 37% of those who enroll through the program. “The projections were on target,” said Tom McKeon, college president. “One of the primary reasons we’ve been able to do this is we’re one of only three community colleges in Oklahoma that receive local money. … And our tax base is large; we have 14 independent school districts. Local funding makes up a third of our operating budget. … That gave us a lot of flexibility. We feel we’re giving back to a county that’s been supporting us for 35 years.” This year, McKeon noted, Tulsa Achieves cost the college $4.6 million, less than 6% of its operational budget. He said that this is “considerably less” than other community colleges in his state offer in scholarships. The local community has embraced Tulsa Achieves to such a degree, McKeon noted, that local residents and business owners have helped the college raise nearly $1.2 million for a “textbook trust.” In this way, deserving students can also have their textbooks paid for without having to dip any further into institutional funds. McKeon believes the college’s financial planning for the program will keep it around for a long time. “We’re committed to our promise,” McKeon said. “It’s not created a financial hardship for our institution, even in the midst of this recession; we’ve had to cut our budgets just like everyone else. But we’re seeing improvement out there; house prices are steady and unemployment is going down.” Matt Short, college financial aid director, sees other benefits. For example, he noted that the college’s annual loan volume decreased by nearly 1,000 loans when it launched Tulsa Achieves and that “is almost certainly correlated very closely to the 1,300 odd freshmen that did not have loans packaged on their awards that year for the first time.” Lauren Brookey, college spokeswoman, noted that, since the program started, its 4,342 participating students have completed more than 92,000 hours in community service. She added that the Tulsa Achieves has also helped the college reach out to minority and other “underserved” students. “We call this the ‘no excuses scholarship,’ ” Brookey said. “It helps spread the word and get more people to go to college. The simplicity of the program, we think, makes it easy for us to tell students that they have no reason not to go to college.” Tracey Medina, for example, is the first in her family to go to college, and she credits Tulsa Achieves with getting her there. “My parents told me that they would help me as much as they could, but they didn’t think it was going to be possible to pay for college,” the 19-year-old said. “Now that I’m here, they are very proud of me because I’m a first-generation college student and I’m helping other students enroll at the school. The rest of my family, especially my nieces and nephews, really look up to me now and always ask me all about college.” Tulsa Achieves has already influenced the creation of another program in Knoxville, Tennessee called knoxAchieves , which will give 500 Knox County public high school graduates up to $3,000 annually for community college tuition. McKeon also said that he has heard from some elected officials in his state of Oklahoma, who have ambitions of creating a statewide program.

More than once, Bailey Osborne thought about dropping out. Like the time her washing machine caught fire. And when daughter Madison was in bed for 11 days with swine flu. That’s when Osborne would look at her four kids and remind herself, yet again, that giving up on college would be a little like giving up on them. “I knew in my heart why I couldn’t just quit,” says Osborne, who on Sunday will celebrate Mother’s Day with a brand-new bachelor’s degree. Her kids — Ashley, 26, Tyler, 25, Casey, 16, and Madison, 4 — plan to be her cheering section Saturday when she graduates from Champlain College in Burlington, Vt. Osborne, 48, says she might never have made it without Champlain’s Single Parents Program, founded in 1988 on the premise that higher education is the surest ticket out of poverty. Rising out of poverty It seems to have made a difference. More than 500 students have earned a degree through the program. A study for the state found that, of 4,007 households that left Vermont welfare rolls in 2003, those who then pursued a college education earned more on average and were less likely to have returned to welfare a year later than those who didn’t go on to school. No one tracks that kind of progress on a national level. But federal data suggest more single parents are entering college. In 2008, they represented 13.4% of the nation’s 18 million college students. Most were women (74%). About one-third attended for-profit institutions. They were more than twice as likely as other students (54% vs. 23%) to be eligible for Pell Grants for needy students, says the non-profit Institute for Women’s Policy Research. And, as Osborne’s experience suggests, low-income parents face challenges far different from their childless peers: •About 1,700 colleges have day care centers for students, parents and faculty, and many also provide academic and financial support. Yet child care sometimes costs more than tuition, and federal funding for campus centers for low-income families has dropped from $25 million in 2002 to about $16 million last year. • Family Care Solutions, a non-profit in Philadelphia, has awarded nearly $2 million in child care grants to low-income students since 1998 but has made no new awards recently. “The lack of funding has seriously threatened our programs,” says president Sherrill Mosee. Demand is high: About 435,000 parents (most of them mothers) applied for scholarships offered since 2008 by eLearners.com, which links students to online programs. It has given 150 awards so far and wants to give 280 this year. •Federal welfare laws since 1996 have emphasized jobs more than education, says Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, a policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a non-profit advocacy group. A few states, including Maine and Kentucky, have created incentives for college-going welfare recipients. But, she says, many states are cutting services, such as tutoring and transportation, that are often critical to single parents. Help for parents is eroding Champlain’s program, funded by state, federal and campus dollars, is no exception. Vermont recently halved its contribution; director Carol Moran-Brown says services will continue, with some changes. Professionals in the field would like to see programs on more campuses but aren’t optimistic. “I have not seen a growing interest in supporting student parents,” says Karen Alsbrooks of Ohio State University , which has a program and has hosted conferences on the topic in recent years. She also is co-founder, in 2005, of Higher Education Alliance of Advocates for Students with Children. About 25 colleges, including Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Berea College in Kentucky, are members. Each program has unique features. Some offer housing, for example, or child care. All aim to help single-parents juggle multiple responsibilities. When her daughter’s illness kept Osborne at home, for example, case manager Felicia Messuri arranged extensions on her homework. When Osborne’s washer was damaged, Messuri tapped an emergency fund to replace it. Many times, Osborne says, Messuri was her “go-to person.” And Single Parents Program “is the glue that holds everything together.”

USA TODAY’s Mary Beth Marklein asked four moms about being a student. See the full report here . Theola Moore, 40 Homestead, Fla., single mother of six. Earned bachelor’s online in January from KaplanUniversity. Biggest challenge: ?It wasn’t always easy being there for my kids’ extracurricular activities and maintaining my GPA. I consider myself a “supermom.” The secret to success: ?Motivation. I tell my kids that the word “can’t” is not in our family’s vocabulary. LaQuandria Blakley, 22 Moore’s daughter, and a single mother of one in Homestead. Earned associate’s degree online in January from Kaplan. Biggest challenge: ?Staying motivated. I had to keep reminding myself that I was doing this to better the future for myself and my daughter. Best part: ?My mother said, “If I can do it, you can do it.” I can tell my daughter I was able to raise her and go to school at the same time. Fraidel Phelps, 34 Married mother of six; graduates Saturday from the Community College of Philadelphia. Best part: ?The example I am setting. When my children see me doing homework, they are much more eager to do theirs. The secret: ?My husband and kids pitch in. I do whatever tasks come my way immediately. There is always something new. Shameka Sawyer, 32 Single mother of three; graduates Saturday from the Community College of Philadelphia. Best part: ? I can show my kids that anything is possible if they work hard and never give up. The secret: ?Believing in yourself. Also, family, friends, and mentors are the people who will encourage you to keep going.