Surprise $70,000 College Bill Has One Outraged Student Taking Action
Get ready for college cost sticker shock: $70, 974. It’s a jaw-dropping amount to have to fork over for one year at your dream school. For 19-year-old Nia Mirza, a student who was accepted through early decision to New York University for fall 2015, it’s several thousand dollars more than she thought she’d have to cough up when she committed to attending. Now the incoming freshman has launched a petition asking NYU to reduce the price to the amount she was quoted when she first applied.
Mirza, who lives in Karachi, Pakistan, wrote on her Change.org petition that previous materials from the school had indicated that a year would cost $64,000. She paid her enrollment deposit in February, and only recently noticed the jump in price after reviewing her financial aid package online. According to Mirza, other early decision students noticed the same thing.
“People who planned their budget according to the previously stated costs, and have exhausted all their resources in doing so, are in a serious problem,” wrote Mirza. “They know they have to go to NYU by hook or by crook because they have no other option anymore and many are considering a gap year due to a high increase from $64000 to $71000.”
Mirza believes that although NYU is upfront about the attendance cost increasing every year, the final amount students are expected to pay should be disclosed before they commit to the school. Once students accept an early decision offer from one university, they’re required to withdraw applications to other colleges. That means she can’t just go enroll at her second-choice school. As a result, Mirza wants the cost of attendance at NYU be lowered back to what was indicated when she was notified of her acceptance in February.
A spokesperson for NYU told Gothamist that the actual attendance price that Mirza was initially given was $66,542, not $64,000, and that when acceptance offers are being extended to early decision candidates "annual budgeting for the following year is still being developed." The spokesperson also said that the estimated price Mirza was given also includes charges that NYU doesn’t bill students for, such as $2,055 in transportation expenses, so that they can budget for the big-ticket costs associated with attendance.
That may be the case, but Mirza sees the situation as part of a larger problem: the upwardly-spiraling cost of college and the amount of student loan debt students have to take on in order to pay for classes.
“We understand that NYU does not meet 100% [financial aid] need but it sure does fail to offer affordable tuition rates for accepted students from even the upper-middle-class backgrounds,” she wrote. “Parents exhaust all of their resources to send their children to NYU and in the case when [families have more than one child], affordability becomes nearly impossible. Childrens' education should be an honor for parents, not a burden of extreme intensity.
As of this writing the petition has nearly 3,000 signatures and the comments are certainly evidence of how prohibitive the cost of going to college has become. In particular, some of the comments from current and former NYU students are especially heartbreaking.
“I'm signing because I had to transfer out of NYU because the cost to attend was exceedingly high. I feel so much sympathy for those who need to take out large loans to attend this expensive university, because I did the same last year,” wrote a commenter from Brea, Calif., named Tiffany Bell.
“I spend more time working to pay for NYU and rent than I do doing homework. When I have to work 8 shifts a week to afford to go to NYU I'm not going to pass the classes because I have no time to do my homework and the necessary readings to do well in class,” commented a current NYU student named Tara Silvestre. “I work hard to go to school. I could have a 4.0 if I didn't work all the time, instead I have a B average, imagine what I could do if I could work less while attending classes,” she continued.
NYU hasn’t indicated that it has any plans to reduce the price. So it looks like if Mirza still wants to attend, she better get ready for Silvestre’s 8-shift-per-week life or, like too many of her peers, prepare to sign on the student loan dotted line.
Original article from TakePart
