Wait, another charge on my college account? Are they serious? This is a thought that crosses every college student’s mind at one point or another. Some questionable fees that happen to collegians are parking pass fees, lab fees, and miscellaneous fees.
Parking pass fees were created for colleges and universities to turn cement into gold. Charging a student hundreds of dollars to park their car in a lot when they are already increasing tuition by the hundreds each year is absurd. The only longshot reason of why they would do this could be to deter students from bringing their cars which would be more eco-friendly, but I have a feeling the policy makers are looking to keep their pockets greener than the Earth. I could understand adding a small fee (upwards of $10) to each student who has a car on campus when the lot is in need of a repaving, but hundreds for two semesters of use? Many schools have a parking pass fee of $200 and when broken down across the school year is about a dollar a day. There are people in the world living for a dollar a day. How amazing would it be for a college to donate even just one semester of students’ parking pass fees to a charity? Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
Another scam on college students is the issue of lab fees. Don’t get me wrong, if you are a pre-med student working in a lab, those chemicals can add up. Plus the equipment used and such are all very expensive, and it is logical for a student studying in a science lab to pay fees. What is crazy is the computer lab fee that various colleges and universities are issuing to students. Personally, I was charged for a computer lab fee as one of my communications was located in a classroom full of computers. What is my money going to? The electricity? The computers are always left on; maybe utilizing the auto-sleep function of these computers would be a better (and greener) way to go. Computers are essential to most any field of study. Students do not pay for a library fee to use that resource which includes a computer lab. I am not suggesting there be a library fee, but I do not understand the concept of charging a class to be in a room of computers when computers are a necessity in multiple areas of study. Should there be a separate classroom light fee as well? Okay, that one may be pushing it, but you understand where I’m coming from, I hope.
Finally, there is a section of college online bills entitled “Miscellaneous Fees.” Who made that one up? Where does that money go, specifically? I know that when a college’s budget gets out of control they dive into this fee, but we are not told where that money is going exactly. I think a complimentary email would be polite, even if our inboxes are already full of those other annoying emails colleges send to their students.
As seen in the news recently, students have begun to fight these problems in hopes to revert how colleges and universities around the world are treating their students.
-TravelBug
I’m reading English Simplified