Illustration by Nick Ybarra
San Jose State is unfairly charging students the same full cost of attendance as previous semesters, despite the school being mostly online.
On July 13, SJSU President Mary Papazian announced through a campuswide email, the school’s plan for Fall 2020, the SJSU Adapt Plan. It does not mention any changes to the cost of attendance although there have been major changes to the campus’s usual operations.
This decision to keep the cost of attendance the same negatively affects the students of SJSU because a lot of students’ financial situations have changed.
We don’t all have the same financial resources as before the pandemic and this has made it harder for students to pay for school, especially for places they won’t be able to use.
A lot of workplaces had to close or reduce their hours because of the pandemic regulations, which means many working students lost their sources of income.
While there has been some relief in the form of unemployment and stimulus checks, not every student was eligible to receive them.
Adults without a Social Security number, even if they have a child with one, were not able to receive a stimulus check. Students who were claimed as a dependent on their parents’ taxes, were not eligible to receive a check either, even if their education is not financed by their parents.
Without financial aid and support from my parents, I wouldn’t have even been able to return to SJSU.
Not every student has the same financial situations I do though. Some don’t have sufficient financial aid, if any at all, or they don’t have financial support from their parents. Their financial situations have changed, but their costs haven’t.
In the plan’s FAQ, it states that some buildings have restricted operations, but the fees paid by students remain the same.
The FAQ clarified that the fees to use the building are not charged per use as a justification to keep the fees the same.
However, there is a big difference between little use and no use. Before, students were able to decide how often they used the school resources, but this decision was taken away because of the regulations.
With the effects of COVID-19 forcing things to move online, the majority of SJSU students won’t even see campus until Spring semester seeing as only 10% of classes are in-person as stated in the July 23 Adapt Plan Town Hall.
Students will have to pay the full cost of tuition despite not being able to access the amenities they are paying for, which is blatantly unfair.
The cost of basic registration fees for SJSU is around $4,000 for full-time, in-state undergraduate students. This cost can go up for out-of-state students, those living on campus and also for students pursuing different types of degrees.
Included in this amount is access to the Student Wellness Center, Spartan Recreation and Aquatic Center and the Student Union. There are restrictions placed on these buildings as well as limited hours.
While these are necessary changes to keep students as safe as possible, these changes should also be reflected in the cost to students.
One reason why students still have to pay the full amount of tuition despite the changes is to help pay off long-term loans, “similar to a mortgage”, that the university took out to refurbish the Student Union and to build the wellness center and the SRAC as stated on its Adapt Plan FAQ.
Although these are payments that cannot be ignored or deferred by the university, this burden shouldn’t be put on students.
SJSU should be looking for places to cut other costs to be able to provide the money needed to pay off the university’s loans, but not at the expense of the students.
Since the semester has already begun, the cost of attendance can’t be changed, but SJSU should consider at least partially refunding the student association fee and the Student Union fee since those are the things students lose out on when they can’t physically be on campus.