Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Tuition

This paper explores how Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, justified imposing tuition at the University of California, despite a near one hundred-year tradition of tuition-free education, by connecting tuition to the student protest movement of the 1960s. This paper argues that Reagan made the case for tuition by claiming that tuition would restore law and order on college campuses. Specifically, he contended that tuition would deter rabble-rousing individuals from attending college and improve the moral character of students. Consequently, this argument proved appealing for the majority of Californians, who expressed concern about the student protests, and thus the public rallied behind tuition. Previous scholarship has examined the role that the student protest movement played in Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial victory, but little has been said of how the student protest movement continued to dominate Reagan’s education policy upon taking office or the political rhetoric he used to justify the imposition of tuition. This paper seeks to add to the research by offering an in-depth investigation of Reagan’s public rhetoric surrounding tuition, using primary source evidence that includes transcripts of speeches and press conferences as well as newspaper evidence.