How is buying a college education like buying a new car? The fucking sticker price, which seems almost intentionally designed to confuse.
Take for example the news that Washington State University’s Board of Regents has approved a 16 percent increase in full-time tuition for undergraduate residents, bringing the 2011-2012 price to $9,374. These numbers have been reported widely in the media without explanation, which is a little surprising considering that $9,374 is only 9 percent higher than this past academic year’s $8,952 tuition price published in multiple locations on WSU’s website. Huh.
It turns out the published $8,952 “tuition” price for 2010-2011 includes a mandatory $512 services and activities fee, while the new $9,374 price does not. You know, kinda like the “destination charge” on a new car sticker. And that’s separate from the additional $896 in “mandatory fees” also listed on the WSU website.
So what’s the true in-state cost of tuition and fees for WSU’s 2011-2012 academic year? WSU chief communications officers James Tinney tells me that he does not expect the fees to increase much if at all, so $9,374 plus $512 plus $896 comes to: $10,782. Ouch. And that’s before the rust-proofing and other pricey options and dealer extras. Add room, board, books, travel and other miscellaneous expenses and you’re looking at about $25,000. A year.
Then again, who but the very wealthy (or the very gullible) pays sticker price and doesn’t resort to financing? But don’t get me started on the mystery that is student financial aid.
UPDATE: Tinney has forwarded me a link to the newly updated tuition and fee rate sheet. The $512 S&A fee remains unchanged at all campuses. The other mandatory fees only apply to the Pullman campus and rise $16 to $912. The Spokane campus charges a $162 health fee.
The true cost is a life of couging everything you attempt.
Don’t forget the cost to your sanity of being on that side of the mountains for 4 years.
Great troll-baiting, Goldy. By what amount is UW increasing their tuition?
@3,
It is assumed that the UW will increase its tuition by 16 percent as well.
As a WSU alum, I can only guide to my experience. Join the army, go to war and get the state mandated 30% tuition break. Made my WSU tuition in 1995-97 around 2000 a year.
And I bet they don’t even include the massive quantities of busch light they’ll be required to drink there.
UW’s tuition has more than doubled in the past ten years.
Almost forgot to back up my statement
http://www.washington.edu/admin/pb/home/…
“mandatory $512 student association fee”
Ah yes, mandatory giving to help the ‘Chicano Transexual Lesbian Student Association’ stay funded.
UW is a top school (ranked 11th public by USNews). Average tuition and fees at the top 15 public schools = $11800. UW is a relative deal, though maybe WSU not so much.
When I went through the UW my tuition statement had a line-item break down of the course fees, activity fees, weather or not I donated to washprig, u-pass, etc. And that is how I would find out the true cost of my edu.
This info is easy to find out, especially if you’re already engaged with advisors and fin aid officers like any prospective student would be.
Maybe the WSU tuition break down wasn’t reported due to piss-poor reporting?
Ha! I love that @1 is the first comment.
Anybody who has attended college in the last 10 years should know that Fees are a common way to raise funds and shore up budgets while bypassing complications associated with raising tuition. They’re also not typically included in tuition scholarship funding and/or tuition waivers.
I was a full time graduate student at the University of Hawai’i a couple of years ago when an added $50 athletic fee was imposed on the students essentially to shore up the athletics department budget shortfalls. No matter how much informal and formal protest there was on the part of the students and community, all that essentially needs to be done is for the governing body (in the case of UH the Board of Regents) to give a yea or nay.
Academic fee increases are a separate and growing (and unfortunately not new) problem in the increasing cost of education.
Why do people always use the “room and board” argument about expensive college is? Not that 11k a year is cheap, but listing a bunch of expenses that you will incur whether you are a college student or not to bring it up to 25k is just crap.
@14 Because at some universities you are all but physically coerced into dorms and meal plans and end up shelling out thousands of dollars more than you would living in low-cost housing eating ramen (or better yet, living with your parents).
Not always the case and not for all for years, but if you cast around more than “but MY college and this other guy and my friend went to that one place where he didn’t have to” you’ll find this to be the case.
That and the inability to work a full time job coupled with people being shoehorned into less-than-part-time-job-pay work study all makes things fun and exciting!