Transgenders don’t pay: College declares ‘financial emergency’

Earlier this week, the board of trustees of Mills College in Oakland, California, announced it was in dire economic straits, and was going to have to consider laying off staff, Inside Higher Ed. reported.

The budgetary crisis at the college will lead to teaching staff, including professors and administrators losing their jobs. The college will have to “to reorder the college’s financial obligations” and “restructure all of its expenses, including staff and faculty salary and other expenses” to attain “financial stability”.

Mills is currently running a huge $9 million operating deficit per annum, which is 16 percent of the school’s annual 2017 budget of $57 million.

Mills College president Elizabeth L. Hillman said she expects up to 35 faculty layoffs, while tenured professors will not be spared either. The liberal arts college employs about 570 full-time and part-time professors, administrators and other employees.

For a single year of undergraduate tuition, fees and room and board at Mills, students pay $59,163. Mills has an endowment of about $177 million, but it is not enough to cover the shortfall.

For the 2015-2016 academic year, Mills received just 839 applications, possibly because parents are less than eager to send their daughters to study with males posing as female.

In August 2014, Mills College became the first women’s college in the United States to admit male students without the requisite female genitalia. Their new policy stated that: “self-identification shall be the driving force behind the College’s eligibility decision.”

“Students who self-identify as female are eligible to apply for undergraduate admission,” according to the admissions policy. “This includes students who were not assigned to the female sex at birth but live and identify as women at the time of application. It also includes students who are legally assigned to the female sex, but who identify as transgender or gender fluid.”

Females who had undergone surgical mutilation to become male were not allowed, however.

“Students assigned to the female sex at birth who have undergone a legal change of gender to male prior to the point of application are not eligible for admission,” the policy read.

But despite its dire financial situation, Mills has decided to become even more radical. They have announced a plan to restructure the current curriculum to focus more on “gender and racial justice”.

The new curriculum — “a bold new education experience” called MillsNext — “will provide students with the tools and confidence to solve complex problems, communicate across differences and take action aimed at transforming their communities and the world,” Inside Higher Ed. noted.

In 1990, when Mills faced similar financial problems, an attempt to admit males led to some 300 angry students going on a two-week strike, the Associated Press reported at the time.