Has anyone else noticed that the U is totally fleecing us? If you saw the latest email about the proposed tuition increase, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I was not at all relieved to read that “it is the University’s goal not to raise tuition more than 3.5 percent … per semester for resident undergraduate(s).” The university’s goal should be to provide the very best education to as many students as possible, but we all know that is not the primary aim of secondary education. Colleges and universities are businesses, plain and simple. If their true function was to cultivate a more educated populace then school would be free. And in my opinion, it should be.
The value of my college education hasn’t been rising each semester since I enrolled, yet the costs of tuition have. When I enrolled in 2010, in-state tuition was $2,408. It has gone up every semester without fail, and by last Fall Semester it had risen to $3,093. It makes absolutely no sense that I should be forced to pay an increasingly higher price for the same product, which was overpriced to begin with. In fact, I would argue that the value of my future degree has actually gone down since I’ve been in college. Every year the oversaturated job market is flooded with more desperate, debt-laden college graduates. Of course, the U has used my extra money to invest in a handful of wonderful new facilities, like the beautiful new business building and the fancy fitness center. But I cannot afford a membership to an unnecessarily ornate gym, and it’s criminal that the university makes me pay for one as part of my “education.” That gym, and even the new business building, have nothing to do with my education, nor do they improve it in any way. Future potential employers aren’t going to be impressed that I graduated from a school that has an 180,000-square-foot gym with half a dozen basketball courts and a pond-sized jacuzzi.
The U isn’t constantly constructing extravagant edifices for the student’s benefit. Students don’t have much of a say. Sure, stylish, shiny structures with luxurious lounge areas and chic cafes are great, but I only have access to those amenities for the four to five years I’m in school. And I’ll still be paying for them 20+ years down the road.
Education is the cornerstone of democracy and a prerequisite for social equality. A democratic society cannot function without an educated constituency. As education continues to grow prohibitively more expensive, our political system continues to grow alarmingly more aristocratic. The silk-gloved grip of the wealthy minority tightens around the neck of the increasingly indebted majority. Not only do universities themselves indiscriminately fleece students, but the government loan programs do too. My annual interest rates have fluctuated from over four percent to nearly eight percent while I’ve been in school. Meanwhile, the federal discount rate, the rate banks pay when they borrow money from the government, has ranged from .5 percent to .75 percent. And I’ve never even asked to be bailed out! In fact, I couldn’t be bailed out of my student loan debt if I tried, or even if I died. A bank or a corporation can claim bankruptcy and all their debts disappear, but student loan debts can almost never be forgiven. Unbelievably, benefactors of deceased debtors can inherit the costs of unpaid college loans.
The cumulative total of my loans, especially after the interest compounds a few times, is going to be astronomical. College is supposed to advance the lives and enhance the freedoms of smart, hard-working people, but it is effectively creating a population of indentured servants. That was not the intention of the college institution when it was established. The purpose is supposed to be to raise up generations of intelligent citizens capable of participating in the political process and enhancing the quality of our nation’s workforce. Yet it seems that our government is more interested in waging mindless foreign wars, subsidizing corporate conglomerates and securing plush executive positions for aging politicians than in facilitating democracy, fostering equality or furthering the collective knowledge of the constituency.