By Ariel Smith
College is expensive– we literally all know.
It’s expensive because teachers and school employees need to get paid. It’s expensive because they provide us with nice labs and experiences. It’s expensive because schools offer perks and bonuses.
In 1968 tuition per semester was $68.50. According to CPI Inflation Calculator, $68.50 in 1960 is equivalent to about $656.57 today. In 2022 if you are a full time undergrad student tuition is $3,425.
As a third-year English major, I am constantly seeing advertisements encouraging me to attend workshops and listen to guest speakers. But have I ever met a person who actually attended any of these things?
No, and in their defense, how many college students have enough free time on a Friday evening to spend at school? My money says working students don’t. This leaves these perks unavailable for everyone.
My email inbox is often full of “English majors, You are invited to…” Which is cute, but is that an expense that’s necessary?
Nearly 74% of Long Beach State’s ASI budget is paid for by us, the students. Essentially, part of our non-personalized expenses goes toward paying for guest speakers and workshops that a large number of us won’t ever attend.
The thing is, many students, like my friends, my roommates, and myself, cannot attend these perks and bonuses because of work obligations. Many students have to work in order to afford school all the while they are being charged for services they will never use.
What we do get is the opportunity to pay for someone else’s educational and personal benefit. One of the hardest pills to swallow about college isn’t that it’s super expensive; it’s that it’s expensive for reasons many will never benefit from.
Perks, bonuses, fancy gyms, rock walls, specialized classes and big pools are wasted if you work too much.
While it’s true some students will benefit from guest speakers and workshops and whatever else the school deems beneficial, it is worth noting that a large number will never receive the very experiences they are paying for.
The crime of these less beneficial perks and bonuses perpetuates the notion that real and intriguing opportunities are for the better off and not to be better off. The irony is that so many students are choosing to pick up extra shifts, work full time, or multiple jobs, all in order to pay for these college expenses that are forever growing.
My mother attended CSULB back in the late ’80s. The amount she paid in tuition fees was actually closer to the cost we pay for parking in 2022 than it is for our tuition.
Sometimes when I talk to her about her experiences at school it makes me wonder if school nowadays is too heavily focused on the perks and bonuses of attending rather than actually attending.
There is no “college plan” any of us can purchase. No– “Well, if you go with the lowest and cheapest plan it only comes with the classes, but if you go with our more expensive plans they’re all-inclusive.”
There’s none of that. So, everyone pays for everything. Even the things never used.
If there were some type of system or payment plan in place, then students would only need to pay for the benefits they’d use. Leaving one less expense for the thousands trying to keep their heads above water.
The heartbreak of it all is that there is no organized system. The perks and bonuses being offered by the school aren’t for everyone, they’re probably not even for the majority, and yet we can’t choose to opt-out of paying for the guest speaker we don’t care much about, or the fancy gyms and workshops we’ll simply never go to.
