$22,945 doesn’t buy what it used to.This year, it will get you a semester of tuition ($18,768) and housing (around $4,175, depending on where you live and how many roommates you have). Anything beyond that, cough it up.In this recession, we all are tightening our belts – students and universities alike. The university should take another look at small sources of revenue that empty students’ pockets for tenuous reasons.From the lab fees for science classes to the $90 performance fees (for any theater class in the Davis Performing Arts Center, whether you perform on stage for class or not), Georgetown University student bills have more added charges than the average cell phone plan. A look at the typical student bill will also show the mandatory $155.50 Yates Field House fee, even if you have never set foot in the gym. If you happen to be a spinning addict, it’ll be another $5 per class.Freshmen, you paid a $160 orientation fee. Everyone pays a $50 student activity fee and a $38 residential communications fee. If you take a leave of absence for a semester, you’re hit with a $20 readmission fee when you return. Don’t lose that room key, or you’ll suffer the $50 lost key fee. The university must be going to the wrong locksmith.This is before you pay for food, travel expenses and textbooks. And don’t forget floor funds – apparently, the $4,000 housing charge doesn’t include those.We understand that a college education is worth a great deal more than all these costs combined. But trying to figure out where all those greenbacks are going can be mystifying. The university must either significantly curtail these small charges or, at the very least, make the process more transparent.The best way to do this is to give students more options. Yates should implement a meal-plan-style fee to be paid only by those who visit the gym – such a system would allow students to pay for specific amounts of workouts or certain exercise classes. This would be fairer to those who have no need or desire to use the gym.The university should also allow students to make copies of their keys, or consider switching to keypad or keycard locks if a multiple-key system would compromise campus security.Flagrantly unfair charges like the readmission fee should simply be abolished.These are only a couple of small proposals, but this is the point. There’s no need for the university to squeeze a few extra bucks out of its already stretched-thin students by piling on extraneous charges.Four years at Georgetown cost around $200,000 – it’s a big investment. If that can’t buy an extra room key and a spinning class, the university should allow students to seek other options.
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