1 In 4 College Students Graduate With $5,000 In Credit Card Debt (Or, The University of Houston Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves)

This is from a poll commissioned by TrueCredit.Com and conducted by Zogby International.

I have one child in a JD/MBA program and two in college, at the University of Houston.  I can tell you I am fighting hard to keep this from happening to my children.  But, it is increasingly hard.

First, they are not only bombarded by direct mail offering credit cards, although they have no substantial employment, but the damn campus sponsors MasterCard and receives kickbacks from the company.  Worse, the school charges each student a fees, each semester, for this privilege.  Instead of IDs they issue students a MasterCard of sorts to use for different things, which the students can put money on the card and are encouraged to turn it into an active credit card.  Then they walk down the campus where predators (you can call them nothing else) will give them free things, like T-shirts and whatever just for signing up.  When there is a little protest, they are told to sign up, get the shirt, wait 60 days or so and cancel the card.  Right.

Second, our public universities (probably all universities but I know of the public ones) are acting like college kids with a new credit card.  There is nothing to which they can say no.  They think no matter what they elect to spend money to do, the students can always come up with increased amounts to pay for it.  As a result, they raise their tuition from 6% to double digits a year.  The problem is, in Texas, as is the case with UH, they lie by omission to the Legislature that is increasingly wanting to regulate tuition, the public and their students.  The omission is that they have also substantially increased their fees and added new ones.  These fees now meet or exceed the tuition.  The University of Houston, for example also has something called Tuition-NDO, which is tuition in addition to the tuition.  And, they are decreasing scholarship money (or at least they have done so to all of my kids despite the fact all have very good grades).

The result, is that my daughter in law school, for example, has to come up with $4,000.00 more this school year than last year for her ongoing education.  The other two, about $4,000.00 more combined.  So, for our family, we need to generate $8,000.00 more just to keep them at a public school?  This does not include room and board, transportation or anything else.

My oldest son took two classes for 6 hours at UH this summer.  The tuition was reasonable.  With fees it cost him $2,200.00 for these two courses.  Classify the money as you wish.  My son was not an isolated case.  In fact, UH failed in its system programing and signed these students up and one amount, only to tell almost all students after the first session was almost over, that they had undercharged them by half and they would not be allowed to register for the fall if they did not cough up the additional money -- all fees.  The problem is how many students would have decided to attend summer school somewhere else if they knew the effective tuition was about $366.00 per credit hour?

The junk fees are enormous and are virtually not disclosed.  It is hard to tell what they are.  There seems to be one fee per student just to cover the utilities of the campus.  I tend to think that if there is a fee, legitimate or not, that is imposed on every student, then it is tuition and should be noted as such.  But, the shame then is that the public universities in Texas would have to tell the Legislature and the public that they more than doubled tuition.  And, why do that when you can just lie about it and hide what is really happening from everybody except the students and families they are bankrupting.

And, do not think that this is an isolated incident.  This has happened every year for the last 5 or 6.  It is reaching the point that it is scandalous.   It is certainly shameful.  Energy prices, utilities and inflation certainly do not help, but this does not explain it.  They say that Texas appropriations are not keeping up, but this is not completely accurate either.  Texas is giving them all more money.

It has simply come down to the fact that these public universities have lost the public trust.  Whatever their lofty goals, they have proven themselves grossly irresponsible at controlling cost.  They have now quit helping and they are bankrupting the future of their graduates.

Comments

[Luke]

Why not "truth in tuition" just as there's truth in lending? I remember what a rude surprise those fees were when I came to UH. I felt deceived. I wouldn't have changed my choice, the private school I had gone to in Boston was still far more expensive but also offset by a hefty scholarship. That cost advantage is growing less and less by the year.

So far Lynden Rose is the only regent NOT to buy the party line that higher costs always translate into a better school, more valuable degree, etc. I strongly suspect this precious logic is dead wrong - the marginal benefit to the school is almost certainly outweighed by the marginal cost to students who have substantially less flexibility to come up with the cash. We could use more regents who stand up for student interests. Sometimes a hike is necessary but EVERY year since deregulation?

I love UH and the education I've received there but the manner in they and the legislature have approached tuition hikes is underhanded (legislative deregulation and fee padding) and contributes to distrust and cynicism among the student body.