Student Debt Pros And Cons

1601 Words7 Pages
In September of 2010, North Carolina State University revised a policy that imposes a tuition surcharge of 50% on students who take more than 140 credit hours to complete a baccalaureate 4-year degree program. Other Universities use similar policies to this one, and while it has a couple of obvious benefits, the principle cons of this concept strongly outweigh the pros. This policy constricts a student’s pursuit of education at its core. This policy makes it financially difficult for a student to change his or her course of study, and strictly limits the amount of flexibility one has if they decide to switch majors at any point during there time in school. At NC State, incoming freshmen are required to declare a major prior to the first day…show more content…
This policy was enacted in 2010. While it probably has little to do directly with that increase in student debt, the University should be putting policies in place to help with this dilemma, not to make it worse. Simple logic suggests that it would not be expensive or costly at all to abolish this policy. Every class taken at NC State has a basic standard cost that is paid for in some way for every student that has ever taken one. That cost is paid for regardless of how many credits that student has attempted, how old that student is, or how many years they have been at this school. Every student has an academic advisor that he or she must consult before officially being allowed to register for classes for the next semester. Every student has temporary ‘holds’ put on their records, by the advisor that stay there until the student and advisor meet, plan out a schedule that is in accordance with their major and the plan they have to follow to earn that major, and only once that meeting takes place and is satisfactory to the standards of that academic advisor, are the holds are lifted. With this policy in place, it is very difficult for a student to just become so off track that they take over a semesters worth of useless classes on purpose or for no good reason. This logic suggests that when a student does go over that 140-credit mark, there must be a valid reason. This policy financially punishes students and their families for reasons they do not know or understand. I could spend a very long time listing some of these reasons, but that would be a waste of my time. Every student’s path varies on his or her way to a degree. NC State as a whole, and the individual colleges, majors etc. already have set in place many academic policies regarding things like overall GPA requirements, academic standards one must maintain to stay in that program, as well
Open Document