by Suzanne Potter
A bill will soon be introduced in the California Legislature that would grant low-income students at five California State University campuses a stipend of $500 a month for basic living expenses. The idea is to provide a universal basic income, so more students can afford to stay in school.
State Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, said the pilot program would serve about 14,000 students, or about 11 percent of the campus population, “because that’s roughly the percentage of students who are essentially in abject poverty. They’re either homeless or severely at risk for being homeless.”
To qualify, the student would have to have a household income below $20,000. The program would cost the state an estimated $84 million a year. Opponents of universal basic income criticize it as a government handout that could be squandered. However, Cortese said data from two such programs, launched in Stockton and Santa Clara County, do not support that concern.
Many campuses in the state already provide housing referrals, food banks and other resources to students in need, but they vary widely. Cortese said if the bill passes and the universal basic income program ends up working successfully to reduce poverty and dropout rates in the Cal State system, it could be expanded.
“If it is effective, you’d want to be doing it on all campuses,” he said, “and probably extend it to community colleges as well.”
The specific schools that would take part in the three-year pilot have not been announced. The legislative deadline to file bills is a week from Friday.
In other non-related news in Mexico:
Mexico City government criticized for providing ivermectin to treat COVID
Some 200,000 people were treated with the unapproved medication
The Mexico City government has become engulfed in scandal due to its distribution of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to people who tested positive for COVID-19, its alleged completion of an unauthorized study on the medication’s efficacy and its publication of a paper detailing its supposed benefits.
The government spent just under 29.3 million pesos (US $1.4 million) to buy 293,000 boxes of the drug – usually used to treat conditions caused by intestinal parasites, head lice, scabies and other skin infections – as well as significant quantities of aspirin and azithromycin, an antibiotic.
The medications are not approved by the federal government or the World Health Organization for the treatment of COVID but the administration led by Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum nevertheless distributed them to some 200,000 people who tested positive, according to an investigation by the news website Animal Político.
The drugs were distributed in medical kits handed out at Mexico City testing stations starting in December 2020. They continued to be distributed until September 2021.
The Mexico City government as well as the federally-run Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) announced last year that they had carried out a “quasi experimental” analysis that found that people who received the ivermectin distributed in the capital were 68% less likely to develop serious symptoms that required treatment in hospital.
