Counting Coins

We students love to break down our student fees. Be it the stuff we enjoy like the lovely gym membership, or the stuff we don’t enjoy like “Sustainability” charges. While it is easy to instantly tear down the wolf and say “hey the last President of the university made $360,000 a year, why am I paying for all this nonsense”, I’m not here to do that (even though your reasoning is understandable). The reality of the situation is that there are a lot of things students do, from events to different clubs, everything costs money and if everyone opted out of every ancillary fee then we would all complain about how there's no clubs, events, or resources. But, it's not so much the fun ancillary fees that bug us students so much as the other nonsense that just seems unfair when you think about it. 

Over the years, one may have heard stories or even experienced having to buy supplies or equipment necessary to complete their chosen program. I have personally heard stories of marketing students having to purchase necessary computer software to complete their assignments, or engineering students having to buy/pirate Auto-CAD for certain classes. Let's compare this to the college stream of programs where your tuition goes directly to securing you access to every computer program you could ever need, often always available in 24 hour labs (and usually with cheaper tuition). When you pay tuition and are accepted into a program one could make a very strong argument that everything should be included in that tuition. Books, programs, and basic equipment should be provided so you can effectively learn. But alas, a university is a business and in business costs are best pushed onto the consumer (which is you). 

Now there isn't really an easy answer to all the extra stuff us students need to pay for, in one half of your brain there is the community minded angel saying “we all need to work together to assure this building works smoothly for all of us”. Then, there's the libertarian angel that says “I don't use this stuff, I'm not paying, Yee-haw!”. Both sides make some reasonable points, but at the end of the day it's your decision on whether you go to student services and complain or not.

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