Rising tuition costs to affect students

residence hall, so it’s plain to see that these new, extravagant buildings are being paid for from our pockets.

I have been at Cabrini for two full years now and since then tuition has gone up almost 20 percent. Our tuition now costs a staggering $24,000 a year, not including room and board fees. We just spent approximately $18 million on a brand-new science building and now the college is embarking on building a new

If you compare our tuition with some of the Ivy League schools, the difference is slowly disappearing. The University of Pennsylvania costs approximately $30,000 without room and board and Harvard costs around $32,000 again without room and board. So why do we have to pay so much money to go to Cabrini College when we could probably just go to Harvard instead?

I went onto westegg.com and typed in our amount of tuition back in 2003, which was about $20,000 and it calculated for me the amount that we should be paying if our tuition rose with inflation at the same rate, which by the way, it should. It totaled it to be $21,012.42, so why are we paying $24,000? That’s right, because our school is building too many buildings and doesn’t have enough money for it. How does Cabrini expect us to pay our tuition if it keeps increasing at this rate? They should be more concerned with keeping the price down, rather than expanding when they cannot afford it.

I was attracted to Cabrini because it was a nice, small, suburban college that seemed like it had the best interest of students put first, but after two years here I feel betrayed. Sure, building new buildings are giving the students the benefit in learning in a nice environment, but in my opinion there was nothing wrong with teaching science and technology in Founder’s Hall. Also, I will not even be here to benefit from the new residence hall being built, so why am I stuck paying for it?

I think a lot of people can agree with me that when they heard about our tuition hike, they were pretty upset mostly because it is clear that the best interests of the students is being ignored. I personally do not want to be buried in debt when I leave college, and a lot of prospective students also will be deterred by rising tuition costs. So, in my opinion, the college really needs to straighten up and start putting the students back at being the number one priority.