4 ms·

Shit I’m fine with keeping stuff if majority of the student body wants to pay for it, but let me opt out. The education system and tangential friends have so fa

Shit I’m fine with keeping stuff if majority of the student body wants to pay for it, but let me opt out. The education system and tangential friends have so far proven the hardest bureaucracy I’ve ever tried to find a way around. I hate that now, when I’m more mature, more experienced, and know exactly what I want from it is the time it’s the most difficult for me to go back.

nonethewiser 4y ago
But why would they do that? They will taught these extravagant programs that few want/need/will take advantage of but they will bake into everyone's tuition.
michaelt 4y ago
> Shit I’m fine with keeping stuff if majority of the student body wants to pay for it, but let me opt out. For things like swimming pools and gyms, sure. But some of the new services are things like 'mental health support' - it would be problematic if you'd opted out of mental health support to save $50/month, then you committed suicide.
- j_walter 4y ago
  What about things you already have...like say health insurance. I went back for an MBA ~2009 while working a full time job. I was forced to pay an extra ~$300 per term for health care even though I already had it through my work. No way to opt out. When my tuition was ~$2,500/term...another $300 doesn't seem like that much except I was paying out of pocket so every dollar counted.
  - yardie 4y ago
    I believe you are confusing the student health fee with health insurance plan and they aren't the same thing. Student health fee goes into paying for the on-campus student services like the athletic fee, computer fee, etc. I haven't been a student in years but I do remember walking into the clinic and getting seen by someone right away. The services under that fee are kind of unique to student lifestyle: birth control, STD tests, vaccines, common prescriptions, mental health. Which is slightly different from family healthcare which requires preauthorization on some health services. BTW, you could get a lot of fees removed or reduced by dropping to part-time commuter student. But they probably got rid of that exclusion since a lot of colleges are chasing money.
    - j_walter 4y ago
      This was a student health fee that also covered health insurance for students (dental too). It was a basic program through Aetna Student Health. Also included urgent and basic services on campus as well as mental health services. I was also an online student that only attended on campus class for 1 weekend per semester. It made no sense to make everyone pay the fee that included significant amounts of benefits that weren't needed by online students (the online MBA program was structured toward those currently working). This was on top of the $41 fee that I paid for the "Rec Center"...which again would never be used by me since I was an online student.
      - yardie 4y ago
        Okay I think I understand better. When I was a student the student health fee you were told was not insurance and compulsory. You could get insurance through the school for $1200/semester. This was mainly international, grad students and their families. Like many first in their family college students I soon discovered a lot of scholarships only covered tuition (and books) and I was left to make up the difference in housing, meals, and fees. I felt the fees were a sly way for the college to scam money out of students. I was required to pay an athletic fee but they weren't required to give me tickets to every football game. For schools, MBA programs are such a money pump if they were entitled to charge more they would. A lot cases the employer pays for the MBA program and they don't have the wherewithal to scrutinize excess fees. So, you end up with online students paying student health, rec, bus, and athletic fees.
        j_walter 4y ago
        Yeah it was eye opening for me too since my first degree was in 2000-2004 there was not such a high student health fee because it covered very basic things and I was under my parents insurance. The fees made a lot more sense when I was on campus and able to use the resources better. I think all online degrees are over the top also because many companies will pay for them. I'm doing a CS degree right now that is online and it's more expensive (per credit hour vs. on campus). Not sure what the on campus fees are, but it seems crazy that not requiring anything more than some server hosting space to charge ~$2,000 for a 4 credit class. Luckily my employer is picking up 90%+ of the tab (maxing out at $5,250/yr).
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >But some of the new services are things like 'mental health support' - it would be problematic if you'd opted out of mental health support to save $50/month, then you committed suicide. This sort of desire to tell people what's good for them is why we can't have nice things. You think you're being reasonable here but there's another well-meaning moron insisting they're being reasonable by preventing students from opting out of the the $50 gym fee, and another well-meaning moron that thinks they're being reasonable by requiring the dining hall have X Y and Z, etc, etc, etc. In reality what you people are doing is the institutional policy equivalent of littering. One or two people do it and it's fine, we can tolerate that. But everyone does it and the park turns into a dump and the college turns into a flaming pile of money that society cannot afford to keep feeding. The least crappy outcome is achieved when none of you get your way.
- solveit 4y ago
  Schools should have none of those. And I say this as someone who happily uses my institution's nice gym and happy that decent mental health support will be available to me should I desire it. Schools try so very hard to be the entirety of their students' lives. They want students socialisation to be within their bounds, they want students to go to their hospital, exercise at their gym, be policed by their police force, work at their on-campus jobs, eat at their cafeteria, live in their dorms, cheer for their sports teams, and so on and so on. And society mostly caters to this desire, which the students and parents are also more-or-less on board with. But even as these integrations individually benefit the students, the net effect is to bubble students away from the rest of the world while also creating a bloated administrative entity that is both too powerful for its own good and completely unable to get things done.

nonethewiser 4y ago

But why would they do that? They will taught these extravagant programs that few want/need/will take advantage of but they will bake into everyone's tuition.

michaelt 4y ago

> Shit I’m fine with keeping stuff if majority of the student body wants to pay for it, but let me opt out. For things like swimming pools and gyms, sure. But some of the new services are things like 'mental health support' - it would be problematic if you'd opted out of mental health support to save $50/month, then you committed suicide.

j_walter 4y ago
What about things you already have...like say health insurance. I went back for an MBA ~2009 while working a full time job. I was forced to pay an extra ~$300 per term for health care even though I already had it through my work. No way to opt out. When my tuition was ~$2,500/term...another $300 doesn't seem like that much except I was paying out of pocket so every dollar counted.
- yardie 4y ago
  I believe you are confusing the student health fee with health insurance plan and they aren't the same thing. Student health fee goes into paying for the on-campus student services like the athletic fee, computer fee, etc. I haven't been a student in years but I do remember walking into the clinic and getting seen by someone right away. The services under that fee are kind of unique to student lifestyle: birth control, STD tests, vaccines, common prescriptions, mental health. Which is slightly different from family healthcare which requires preauthorization on some health services. BTW, you could get a lot of fees removed or reduced by dropping to part-time commuter student. But they probably got rid of that exclusion since a lot of colleges are chasing money.
  - j_walter 4y ago
    This was a student health fee that also covered health insurance for students (dental too). It was a basic program through Aetna Student Health. Also included urgent and basic services on campus as well as mental health services. I was also an online student that only attended on campus class for 1 weekend per semester. It made no sense to make everyone pay the fee that included significant amounts of benefits that weren't needed by online students (the online MBA program was structured toward those currently working). This was on top of the $41 fee that I paid for the "Rec Center"...which again would never be used by me since I was an online student.
    - yardie 4y ago
      Okay I think I understand better. When I was a student the student health fee you were told was not insurance and compulsory. You could get insurance through the school for $1200/semester. This was mainly international, grad students and their families. Like many first in their family college students I soon discovered a lot of scholarships only covered tuition (and books) and I was left to make up the difference in housing, meals, and fees. I felt the fees were a sly way for the college to scam money out of students. I was required to pay an athletic fee but they weren't required to give me tickets to every football game. For schools, MBA programs are such a money pump if they were entitled to charge more they would. A lot cases the employer pays for the MBA program and they don't have the wherewithal to scrutinize excess fees. So, you end up with online students paying student health, rec, bus, and athletic fees.
      - j_walter 4y ago
        Yeah it was eye opening for me too since my first degree was in 2000-2004 there was not such a high student health fee because it covered very basic things and I was under my parents insurance. The fees made a lot more sense when I was on campus and able to use the resources better. I think all online degrees are over the top also because many companies will pay for them. I'm doing a CS degree right now that is online and it's more expensive (per credit hour vs. on campus). Not sure what the on campus fees are, but it seems crazy that not requiring anything more than some server hosting space to charge ~$2,000 for a 4 credit class. Luckily my employer is picking up 90%+ of the tab (maxing out at $5,250/yr).
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>But some of the new services are things like 'mental health support' - it would be problematic if you'd opted out of mental health support to save $50/month, then you committed suicide. This sort of desire to tell people what's good for them is why we can't have nice things. You think you're being reasonable here but there's another well-meaning moron insisting they're being reasonable by preventing students from opting out of the the $50 gym fee, and another well-meaning moron that thinks they're being reasonable by requiring the dining hall have X Y and Z, etc, etc, etc. In reality what you people are doing is the institutional policy equivalent of littering. One or two people do it and it's fine, we can tolerate that. But everyone does it and the park turns into a dump and the college turns into a flaming pile of money that society cannot afford to keep feeding. The least crappy outcome is achieved when none of you get your way.
solveit 4y ago
Schools should have none of those. And I say this as someone who happily uses my institution's nice gym and happy that decent mental health support will be available to me should I desire it. Schools try so very hard to be the entirety of their students' lives. They want students socialisation to be within their bounds, they want students to go to their hospital, exercise at their gym, be policed by their police force, work at their on-campus jobs, eat at their cafeteria, live in their dorms, cheer for their sports teams, and so on and so on. And society mostly caters to this desire, which the students and parents are also more-or-less on board with. But even as these integrations individually benefit the students, the net effect is to bubble students away from the rest of the world while also creating a bloated administrative entity that is both too powerful for its own good and completely unable to get things done.