Though word is out that the current economic crisis plaguing the United States is gradually stabilizing, individual states are still finding need for new cutbacks and budget revisions. In California, schools within the University of California system received shocking news that tuition will be raising by 32 percent, starting next fall. This will bring the costs to students, not including room and board, up by $2,500, which will have a severe impact on the budgets of current students and those considering beginning at UC schools in the upcoming school year. Although here at Boston University, where full tuition not including room and board soars just below $40,000, a $2,500 increase seems paltry, students nationwide must consider the hike proportionately. This will help them see things from the UC point of view, so that they can effectively sympathize with the plight of not only their fellow American students, but also the effects of a host of administrations that have not yet learned how to prioritize.
For example, 30 percent of BU’s tuition would be about $11,000. The idea of suddenly receiving a letter from the university saying that in the following year, students will be expected to conjure up an extra $11,000 out of nowhere is completely unthinkable. That being said, one must consider that same expectation in the proportion of a UC student whose tuition is going up that same percentage. In a time when parents are losing their jobs and homes, any kind of extra financial burden ‘- especially for something as essential as a college education, especially when degrees are necessary to be competitive in an unforgiving job market ‘- is an unreasonable one. Pulling tuitions higher and higher seems to go completely against common sense to combat the negative symptoms of a recession ‘- the burden should never be put on students in that high and significant of an amount. Other schools are cutting back on luxuries, pay raises for faculty and construction endeavors ‘- did the UC system really exhaust all alternatives before resorting to this?
Students who choose to go to state schools do so primarily to save money, and it’s reasonable to say that no student, not even those attending the most expensive colleges, will take a tuition hike with a grain of salt. University of California community members should not be kind to this unfair adjustment, and fellow students nationwide should stand behind their UC peers while considering what a 30 percent tuition increase would mean to each and every one of them. Truly, it’s time to ditch the easy-out solutions and think of more creative, outside-the-tuition answers for financial hardship.
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