Excuse Me Sir, Spare A Dime For My Doctorate?

By Joe Prebich, 8-30-05

The lengths to which students go to make it to school are astounding. For me the trip is three states long and damn those states are long. From Northeastern Minnesota, I ramble every fall into the car and out onto the open road. An idyllic story of Americana, the eldest off to school. Proud and strong I'm on the highway, Bobby Zimmerman hitting all the right notes as I put rubber to tar. But every 300 miles or so I would breakdown in tears. Was I homesick already? Lonely? Do I have emotional problems? Naw, I have gas problems.

Fifty bucks and I am not even out of Minnesota. One hundred gets me only halfway across North Dakota. And the price tag climbs as I chase the sun westward. And though it may be old hat, gas prices are killing the students along with everything else that goes along with hitting the books.

Tuition rose 7.75% for this year and the powers that be think that we should thank them. They even went so far as to call their effort to keep tuition down "heroic". But, that’s not good enough for me. Knowledge is power, education is the key, but debt is crushing. The kids that can’t afford to pay now, will surely pay later and I am one of them.

From books to apartments, food to transportation, I just can’t keep up. "Work hard and you can do it", they say. But even if I do work hard, with the Montana's average salary the lowest in the nation and minimum wage hovering around the $5 mark, to pay off my out-of-state tuition for one year, it would take me 2,800 hours of minimum wage work to pay off the expenses at UM. If I break that down into an 8 hour day that comes out to 350 days of work. How do I do that if I am in school all day? And remember, that’s only one year.

But there are places where students can save money. Check the internet, maybe the books you need are available electronically for free. If they are, download them and print them off at a lab on campus where you have free print credits. All you have to do when you run out is bring in a sleeve of copy paper and they will restock your credits. Also, request that teachers put their materials on reserve and e-reserve on the library. Or you can search for textbook deals on sites like Amazon.Com. And with the average cost of textbooks and school supplies at a whopping $898 you can’t afford not to shop around.

Still, it is a shame that the University has replaced higher learning with higher profits. And just as my gas problem could have been remedied by OPEC loosening it’s grip, so could my education burden been lifted by OPESCC-Organization of People Exploiting Students with Credit Cards. So to the powers that be, work harder, because I'm all maxed out.


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