Janine Savoie – Special to the Southern News
College tuition, a couple of words that I tend to freak out about twice a year–not to mention the thought of student loans, but I know I’m not alone. Tuition and loans are a scary thought for almost anyone; the freshmen, the current attendees, and of course the graduates that might still be paying off their loans well into their adult lives. We are fortunate at SCSU to pay low costs compared to private schools.
It was only a few years ago that I was paying an ungodly amount of tuition at a private school in central Connecticut. I transferred out and changed my major, but tuition definitely played a huge factor in the new school I chose to attend. While I am one of the lucky students whose parents help with school, I will still leave with a good amount of loans; probably not as much as I would have had, but still enough to make me constantly stress about money.
Financial Aid and FAFSA literally laugh at me when I fill out the forms each year. I almost feel like it’s pointless for me to even try at this point because every year I hear the same thing: your mom makes too much money. It’s strange to me, the fact that our household income, our parents, etc. affect the amount of money we can receive to help us pay for school. I thought that when I turned 18 I was done, technically my mom could kick me out and not really have to support me anymore, but I was wrong.
When you turn 18 and decide to go to college, your parents, your household, and a bunch of other factors you think would not matter anymore totally squashes your chances of receiving good federal help for tuition, at least in my case it did. Sure the school loans me money or gives me grants, but I’m still paying them back in the end. When it comes down to it, my mom makes too much money and I have to pay the full tuition cost.
Fortunately my parents help me out. We aren’t extremely wealthy by any means, but they work hard for their money and saved up for college since I was born. On the other hand, I know students who have parents who can’t help them. Some parents just won’t, but most can’t afford it.
So when financial aid tells you that your dad alone makes too much money, there’s no rule saying he has to help you out with school, so you end up on your own. How is that fair? If your parents make too much money, should they have to help you out? It seems that FAFSA just assumes they will. So how do we get by?
Student loans or grants seem to be the only way out. I work two jobs, but I’m not going to start paying off my loans until I graduate. I can only hope that I will find a job out of college that will support the last four or five years of education I have to pay for. It doesn’t help when I have other bills I have to pay for on my own. For now I’m going to sit back and try to stuff some money into my savings account, but with my graduation date coming closer, I’m starting to really think about tuition and how long it will take me to pay off my loans.
