My heart leaped when I opened my bill for college this semester. “How could it possibly be so cheap?!” I asked myself. Then I remembered, we are living through a pandemic, which means I will be living at home and taking remote classes. For me, tuition for the fall of 2020 became a silver lining of this pandemic. However, I soon realized that in many other countries, higher level education is approximately the price of my fall 2020 tuition bill on a good day.
According to Insider, the average cost of college is around $4,500 in Australia, $900 in Austria, $4,900 in Canada, and $0 in Germany; all of these prices are annual tuition fees even without a pandemic raging on around the world. In fact, some of these annual tuition fees are even cheaper than my tuition fees for the semester.
It is no secret that higher level education in the U.S. is outrageously overpriced, but to think that it took a public health crisis with over 150,000 deaths nationwide for higher level institutions to lower tuition is something I truly cannot wrap my head around.
Even though my school fees have been drastically reduced, it’s only because I do not have to pay for room and board. My tuition fees still include technology fees and fees that would typically go towards club funding and other student affairs. However, given that I will be living at home, I will definitely not be using any school technology. It was also brought to my attention that many clubs at my school will not be receiving funding for the 2020 fiscal year.
As colleges announced their reopening plans, my Instagram feed became filled with posts about how lowering tuition will not solve anything, as individuals argued that lowering tuition would take resources away from lower income students. Although I completely agree that lowering tuition has the potential to negatively impact families with lower socioeconomic statuses, this excludes a major part of the bigger picture: most schools are not poor.
This brings me to my next point, a school’s endowment. Yes, schools are only allowed to use a certain amount of their endowment every year, and it cannot be used towards students. However, you would think that a public health crisis would allow for some exceptions, but I guess not. What is the point of having such a large endowment if it cannot even be used towards student affairs? There are only so many renovations and construction projects a school can undergo. Additionally, schools should not fear running low on endowment money because most schools not only have more money than they need, but they will never run out if they continue to overcharge students.
These remarks regarding tuition are based on my in-state tuition fees for the public university I attend. Many of my friends attend elite, private colleges, and you can think twice about their fees being lowered. In fact, Harvard increased their tuition by 4%. The richest school in the U.S. had the audacity to increase their tuition in the midst of a global pandemic— how does this make any sense?
Of course, schools are struggling due to COVID-19, but once again, if schools could simply tap into their endowment, couldn’t a lot be avoided?
America’s higher level education system is broken. It excludes families who cannot afford it – while there is financial aid, the system is far from perfect. We need debt free college. Education is a human right. We cannot walk the talk of ensuring that everyone succeeds in society while we fail to make higher level education more accessible.
Although my tuition fees for the fall of 2020 made me feel extremely relieved, that feeling quickly dissipated when I remembered the student loans I had to take out for the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2020. Once again, I want to emphasize that I attend a public university, pay in-state tuition, and have scholarships and some government financial aid. If I were a student at an elite, private college, I know for a fact that I would not experience any relief when looking at my bill during the era of COVID-19.
If there is anything I want you to take away from this piece, it is that it “only” took a public health crisis for America to temporarily make one semester of in-state tuition at public universities even the slightest bit comparable to full year tuition at many international universities. However, what will it really take for America to permanently revamp its higher education system and make it affordable and accessible for everyone? How much more will the general public be expected to sacrifice?
Comments