By James Harwell
We can agree that February has been a month of school-wide decisions. A prime example is when “Ms. Winter” decided to let us know that she is still around, and Bellarmine made the ungodly decision to make school harder for us on snow days. Although I already made my statement about classes moving online during bad weather, I would like to get to something that is more pressing than snow days: tuition.
On Feb. 9, Bellarmine University President Dr. Susan Donavan sent out an email to the Bellarmine community, spreading the news about the tuition increase for the 2021-2022 school year. In the email, she explained the tuition will increase by $1,450. Supposedly, $700 will go to books and course materials, and the rest of the $750 is to fund the COVID-19 classroom needs.
One reason for the tuition increase is: “…. all books and course materials will be included as part of the cost of tuition and will be provided through the new Bellarmine OnCourse program.”
Adding books and course materials to the tuition cost is a strategy to have all books accessible to students and to hopefully raise student GPAs. When it comes to the affordability, the email says: “Follett projects that OnCourse prices per credit hour will be lower than current prices. At the same time, students will now be able use financial aid to pay for the direct cost of books and course materials.”
After reading the email, there was one question that kept returning to me: Why would Bellarmine raise the tuition if its own financial aid office is f’ing up students’ financial aid packages?
Many students, from first-years to seniors, have multiple problems with getting through to the financial aid office, or they wait forever for financial aid office representatives to get back with information.
Do you really think we can rely on an office that determines whether we can take classes for the year to handle our tuition which will now include our books? What happens if financial aid takes forever again and students can’t get their books by the first day, which is one of the stated goals for OnCourse? I guess a few of you will probably be bookless for the first week. Or two.
First-year student Divya Joseph said, “I spend less than $50 of books for every semester because I get them online or get them cheaper somewhere else.”
Junior Kam Guess said: “Some of my friends were stressed out at the beginning of this year because their financial aid packages weren’t set up right or didn’t arrive on time. They take their sweet time to get financial aid packages ready.”
Aside from the financial aid problems and questions, I believe that Bellarmine is doing its best to make getting an education easier and more accessible. But I also believe Bellarmine does not really think about how its decisions can affect each student.
First-year student Julia Cordts said: “It’s irresponsible because it doesn’t allow students who are not fortunate to keep their outside scholarships with the tuition increase. It also doesn’t take into account of students who chooses to outsource to get books.”
Guess said, “It will affect us negatively because students will have to consider transferring because they don’t have the money.”
Let us be honest. A good portion of professors do not require books for their classes and use alternative options. Not all heroes wear capes. Other than the grace our professors give us, students use alternative ways to find these overpriced textbooks on Amazon, a local bookstore, or maybe a PDF if God allows.
“I do not agree with the tuition increase. Most kids don’t even spend so much on books so then that’ll leave them to pay $1,000 that they didn’t use,” Guess said.
For me, I remember that it was stressful having to find a way to pay for books that are thicker than the Bible. If I weren’t graduating, this tuition increase would concern me severely.
Looking at my own bank account statements, books every semester did not total $350, which is the amount of money that will be allocated for books and course materials. Let me be clear: the average price range of all the books I had for each semester didn’t go over $350. So, Bellarmine, please answer my question: What made you think that ALL students’ class materials cost $350 a semester?
Just to make things more interesting, consider that Eastern Kentucky University is doing a similar program with its partner, Barnes and Noble. In this program, students will get hard copies of their books and will not have to pay the full price. EKU students are happy and seniors are sad that it began this year because this saves students $1,200 a year, according to EKU’s website. If only Bellarmine cared about students’ bank accounts instead of its own.
Many of you may ask, “James, why are you talking about the tuition when it doesn’t have anything to do with you? You’re about to graduate!” Yes, I am leaving, but I don’t want to see remaining and future students suffer. All students are the future of the world. Why make it harder to achieve success? In my book, that’s not what the Bellarmine Difference is.