Alanna Gillis 

Opinions Editor

amg7393@psu.edu

Tuition prices are on the rise yet again for many colleges in the United States. “Several institutions have already announced tuition and fee hikes for next year as high as 4.7 percent, while also raising prices for meal plans and housing — which, at public four-year universities, are already higher than in-state tuition,” says National Broadcasting Company News. 

Colleges have cited the increased prices of everything from food to electricity as the cause for the increase. According to the National Broadcasting Company, NBC, this “comes at the worst possible time…as enrollment had declined by nearly a million students since the start of the pandemic”.

I can’t say that I blame students for not enrolling- or even dropping out or taking a break- at this point in time. Attending college during a global pandemic has been incredibly taxing, especially when people will not mask up properly or don’t report to the school when they test positive, which only increases the stress on campus. Even before the amount of work that comes with being a college student, existing alone in such a stressful time is a challenge. 

If we factor in schoolwork on top of staying well mentally and physically, there is no reason we should be passing judgment on the students who take a leave of absence, drop out, or don’t enroll at all. If we assume the standard of three hours of work outside of class per each credit the student is taking, that means that at least 36 hours outside of class is being dedicated to schoolwork; this number being based on the minimum credits you can enroll in at Penn State while stull being a full-time student, which is 12. Adding that to the job the student may work to help pay for the already-too-expensive tuition, and still expecting students to be able to manage everything in their lives on top of the underlying stress that has gone on for two years is ridiculous.

 Students who decide that college right now isn’t what is best for them should be respected in that decision, and should not be blamed for making it “the worst possible time” for tuition prices.

Charging more for what I’m going to call “pandemic education” is not right; the main reason being that the quality of education most students in America have received since the pandemic started has taken a steep nosedive. As someone who has only ever been exposed to college during “the COVID years” as I’ve heard my peers call them, and will probably graduate during “the COVID years”, I would be outraged if I learned my tuition was increasing. 

I understand that professors do the best they can, but when at times half the class is missing because they’re quarantining, or things suddenly get moved to virtual learning, it doesn’t create the best atmosphere for learning. Therefore, it should go without saying that if the quality of education being provided by a college is not the best it can be, students should not be paying more to receive that education. 

Only when the quality of education increases will I be more accepting of increased tuition. Until then, tuition in United States schools is already too high, and expecting them to fork up more money is ridiculous.