With every raise of tuition, students’ willingness to continue to pay drops. The cost of room and board, books, supplies and all other extra fees, would lead one to think that colleges, especially a large school like Texas State, should have enough money to keep itself running.
This observation makes it hard to understand why any public school would continue to overpower their students by continuously raising the cost of tuition. In 2015, Texas State students who took an average 12 hours saw an extra one hundred dollars leave their bank accounts every semester.
Additionally, last year we saw Texas State administration approve a tuitionincrease of 2.95 percent for the 2018-2019 school year. This means a $161 increase for students enrolled in a fifteen credit hours. Eventually, these somewhat small costs will begin to add up.
The budget shows that the increases will go towards rennovations of the student center as well as a $1 boost to the athletic fee. They seek to expand, and that is understandable, but when does the time come where the fees and the costs have become so ridiculously high that no one can afford to attend?
If any of us wanted to attend an expensive school who charged absurd amounts of money for the same exact degree, we would have attended a private school like Texas Christian University or Baylor University which currently have a tuition of $44,508 and $40,198 respectively. Texas State should maintain its identity as an affordable institution rather than competing for the prestige associated with expensive tuition costs.
We do not need brand new locker rooms or renovations on a student center that has only seen 40 years. We need affordable education and maybe some more parking spots if the administration feels generous with their budgeting.
There are currently 38,694 students enrolled at Texas State; if we all pay roughly 5,300 dollars a semester for 15 class hours and fees without room and board, our college receives over 205 million dollars in one semester. If that cannot cover collegiate expenses in one single semester, then our school has a budgeting problem.
It is indisputable that running a college is expensive. However, if a highly prestigious college, such as Oxford, can run their own college while charging less than $12,000 for an entire year, colleges that lay on a much less prestigious level could as well.
Raising tuition and adding extra fees may help the university buy more amenities or new technologies, but at the end of the day, student bank accounts suffer and sometimes only for things they do not reap the benefits from. Budgeting must become a high priority for administration, otherwise students will begin seeking lower-priced institutions.
Students do not need to spend their money as much as the university wants them to. The focus must be on the students’ needs and not on the wants of officials.