The top officials at the college recently met concerning budget issues about the college. A topic that came up was tuition and room and board costs-the majority voted at the meeting that tuition and room and board should be raised anywhere from two to 11 percent. Private colleges around the country raise tuition every year, so the tuition increase should come as no surprise. The shocker is the raise in room and board.
Although the college is not-for-profit, it still takes market factors such as perceived value and competitive pricing into account in setting its price. But, if room and board is going to be raised, are the resident students going to start to see an improvement in the living conditions or is nothing going to change?
There is no question that Cabrini students get their money’s worth in the tuition price. The school’s professors and academic programs are excellent and the new Science, Education and Technology building will only improve that. The recent jump in SAT scores and GPAs and the wireless technology are other indications that Cabrini is a well-rounded academic institution. As a result of these improvements, the tuition increase is an acceptable proposition. The room and board increase is another story.
Overall, there are 11 residence halls on campus to hold the 940 resident students. The overcrowding and the age of the dorms have caused a majority of them to be in deplorable condition, especially the seven houses on Residential Boulevard. The school rents out much of the residences in the summer time to camps and it gives the cleaning service little time to properly clean the rooms before the academic year starts. The occupants of one of the rooms upstairs in House 5 had to get their carpet shampooed because of how dirty it was. Students should not have to do this on their own.
Besides unpleasant living conditions, the food is not one of the school’s bright spots. Jazzman’s has the healthy food and scrumptious bakery and beverage items, but the prices are high and the service is unnecessarily slow. The dining hall is always hit or miss, especially on weekends when the food is scarce.
The Resident Hall Association is supposed to be the organization to handle these concerns, but the RHA is a little-known club around campus. Since resident living is such a huge complaint from so many students, one would think RHA would advertise and offer its services to fight for students’ rights, but too many people know too little about it.
The room and board increase would be a whole lot easier to swallow if the resident students saw an improvement in the conditions that have been issues for years, but nothing happens. The students expected change and received nothing in return. Students are going to pay more to live in cramped conditions, when other colleges give money off for overcrowding the rooms. Now the college is expecting students to pay more to live in the conditions they expected would improve.
Posted to the Web by: Mark Garlit
