Jack Sweeney
Editor-in-Chief
Now might be a good time to text your folks a quick “thank-you.”
Or maybe send them your last Denny’s paycheck.
In case it hasn’t slapped you in the face yet, this upcoming school year’s overall fee is going to top out at $57,162.
I was overlooking my accumulated college credits the other day, and I was reminded that three of my AP credits transferred here from high school. This, along with the freebie summer course CC offers, would give me an extra semester of credit.
Did I really just stumble across a way to save over $28,000, perhaps even more if I take that semester off during my senior year?
When you’re of college age, especially in the current job market, $28,000 is a life-altering amount of money – that’s rent in a decent apartment or money for a start-up business.
I’m aware I’m just another in a sea of students complaining about the average cost of a four-year education, but if you take a look at what that money does actually get you at CC, it’s disconcerting.
While a $28,000 semester at CC may be the best educational investment you’ve ever made, it may also include the semester where you took a two-block foreign language requirement (which you already took in high school and will likely forget in a couple months) in addition to a two-block “West in Time” requirement class that you got dumped into because you spent all your points to get a course in your major with a decent professor.
Wow, that came across pretty cynical.
But, when I’m faced with the daily guilt of how much my parents have to sacrifice for me to be here, I think it’s fair to take into account how I spend every single moment of my time here.
Is it worth it? If whoever was funding you to go here wrote you a check for over $200,000, how could you change the world? By that token, should we all drop out?
It’s hard to go to this school and not feel like a privileged asshole. I wrestle with these questions daily, and usually, this is the point in the column where I find the silver lining or suggest some naïve solution.
But I just can’t justify how much a basic education costs in America.
So in case I forget to text this week… thanks mom and dad.