Students registering for classes next quarter must brace themselves for the financial blow they will inevitably receive when their mandatory registration fees are due. Seeing the large bill in front of them, a wincing face and guttural groan are natural reactions.
Because of the sticker shock of high fee rates, many students fail to carefully examine how their money is allocated. The overwhelming majority of the money is directed to the “”education fee.”” This may reassure students that their hard-earned dollars are going to a worthy cause – directly into their instruction. But what they probably don’t know is that part-time students pay only half of the education fee.
Since a part-time student will be taking significantly fewer units than full-time students, shouldn’t they pay accordingly? A student’s education fee should be directly proportional to the number of units in which they enroll.
This logic, unfortunately, does not apply to most UCSD students, because for the majority of the school year, full-time students pay a flat rate for education fees. A student enrolling in classes for spring quarter will pay $1,802 whether they are taking 12 units, 22 units or possibly more, with college approval.
The current system does not serve students’ best interests. UCSD students know how frustrating it is to find that they can’t enroll in a class to fulfill graduation or major requirements because enrollment is full. It is common to see classes packed to the gills the first week of a new quarter. Lucky individuals with early enrollment times don’t have to face the uncertainty of students condemned to the waitlist, left wondering if they’ll be able to squeeze in or if they’ll have to completely rearrange their schedules.
It is perplexing, then, to see a great many students drop out of such an apparently desirable class. This is because of the pervasive strategy of enrolling in more units than students need or want at the beginning of each quarter, knowing that they will be able to drop their least-favorite classes later.
This is actually an excellent (if slightly dishonest) use of the current system, and points out one of its major flaws. A flat education fee encourages students to overload their schedules, often with the intention of dropping at least one class, knowing there will be no financial repercussion.
An unfortunate consequence of this is that students with later registration times are unable to enroll in courses they need to take. Particularly affected are students with uncompromising work schedules, who face the double whammy of not being able to enroll in convenient sections – and thus finding themselves further down the list of enrollment times because they cannot accrue as many units as other students.
As the current system operates, many students are forced to bear the financial burden of peers who frequently change their majors, take on unnecessary double majors and minors or enroll in extra courses only to later drop them.
If the education fee were proportional to the number of units a student enrolled in, he would become more selective when choosing courses. The knowledge that the fee was directly related to the individual number of units would encourage both careful class selection and an increased dedication to classes.
A proportional fee system – in which students pay per unit – is currently in place at community colleges all over the country and during the summer at UCSD.
Adopting a year-round proportional fee would discourage this waste of time and resources.
