Official Participant in the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon

When Jerry McGuire aka Scientology Prophet Tom Cruise screamed “SHOW ME THE MONEY!” I was sadly reminded of the $2.50 in my pocket. I had no money. I was tempted to yell back at the screen, “Show me YOUR money! I don’t bloody have any!!”

At the beginning of the senior year in high school in 2004, news reached my class that because of funding issues, many classes and extracurricular activities were being cut, dropped and set ablaze.

My grand finale to the past four years of high school ended with a school paper that was reduced to a activity that took up a majority of my free time, a year book that looked like it had been through the wood chipper and a disbandment of classes that made taking algebra II bearable.

Now, the only time I’m reminded of these issues facing my college experience is first thing in the morning when I get to campus. There’s always a wall of chalk writing that says: FIGHT FEE INCREASES! With a giant graph of how much tuition at SF State has increased over the years.

No one needs to draw me a graph to show me how much money I’ve been wrestled out my pocket of over the last few years. I bought nearly fifteen books for one class this semester and I can almost make an accurate guess as to how much money the school is going to give me back for returning those books at the end of the year – 30, maybe 50 bucks if I’m lucky.

Then, they’ll jack up the price of those same books for another poor soul two months later for the SAME textbooks.

I don’t understand why my school needs to raise the price of tuition every year.

State is insanely overcrowded. You can’t sneeze without accidentally hitting someone. Every year, a new batch of freshmen come in and a majority of them stay over the typical four years that are dubbed ‘the normal’ length a student should be in college, because it is harder to get classes. And why are there so few classes? Because there’s apparently no money for them! But with the amount of students coming into the system that are actually paying their way through college as the bill comes in, there must already be a lot of money getting routed into the system from that alone.

Either that, or the yearly increases are feeding the pockets of the higher ups.

I would have thought all my tuition money would be put towards getting more teachers, so there would be more classes – I wouldn’t have to spend an extra two years tormenting my professors with my educationally exhausted/jaded presence.

Tuition limbo hell is a vicious cycle. First, you have overpriced education. Then, you have a country on the edge of being in a recession. Take the typical starving student and throw in the fact that they are suppose to be graduating this year or next. Imagine them getting out of college and being in a position where they can’t make any money because they aren’t any job positions. No job. No money to pay back loan. No alternative income, no loan. Can’t go to school. Can’t go to school harder to get the foot in the door in some of the bigger, more competitive industries.

You see the problem here.

“SHOW ME THE MONEY!

“GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!”

We could have universal/free education – but then no one would be making money off us lowly students.
—Eming Piansay