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Cost Of College Fees

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For most, the thought of how much money is spent on college gives prospective students a headache.The cost is still high despite the implementation of scholarships and financial aid included. When a student or parent receive the dreaded bill from a university, it is assumed that all the expenses are written on the bill, but that is not always the case. Instead many secondary schools have been introducing additional costs, which in most cases are not relevant to the student. For example, California Polytechnic State “has the annual $814 ‘student success fee’, ” which is snuck into the cost of tuition as mandatory (Sharpe). People are being cheated by their schools when they are unknowingly paying for hidden fees such as “student success” or …show more content…

Many say that these miscellaneous fees are there to help the student body or makeup for educational tax cuts. While this can be the case for some schools, many occasions show that universities are misusing the money they receive from their students. To illustrate, Rutgers university charged $170 for a dance appreciation course fee. It was said the fee was in place to “defray the costs of visiting artists and performance tickets” but instead “about $36” was actually contributed to the performances (Sharpe). The rest of the money was thrown about on various matters ,which made a spokesman from Rutgers announce that “[fee money] was used too broadly” (Sharpe). Also adding in fees to yearly tuition does not help schools balance out losses from educational tax cuts , it can actually make them pay more money. The University of Dayton has recently decided to change their plans because adding in fees actually cost them more than the fees were worth. The private university was actually spending more on sending “40,000 separate bills...for fees” and no longer had to “go through the process of replacing students who quit [due to high costs]” ( Marcus). Dayton University only received positive results from this with a “surge of applications and an increase in enrollment” …show more content…

The schools themselves dupe students into supporting additional costs with votes. According to Dr. Vedder, as quoted in the New York Times, said that “universities use students ‘for cover’” (Sharpe). Universities do this by casting votes on fees however they know students would like an improved campus etc.. By doing this, they can manipulate the students and say the student body wanted this or that so we had to raise a price here or there. However, as found from audits of various schools, the money is not spent on what it should be leaving an unsatisfied and broke student

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