In a recent opinion piece from The Daily Orange,“SU’s cost of attendance is worth it for students,” columnist Melanie Wilder defends Syracuse University’s cost of attendance — $77,305 — which many people believe is an outrageous price.

Wilder gives reasoning behind SU’s increased cost over the years, writing, “…the University’s highest expense is undergraduate financial aid. SU spent about $324 million on undergraduate financial aid and about $90.5 million on graduate and law financial aid, about a quarter of SU’s total expenses.”

In 2018, Maurice Harris, dean of SU’s undergraduate admissions, stated that as SU “generates new revenue to advance the Academic Strategic Plan and Invest Syracuse and Campus Framework, prospective students and families recognize the return on investment, the value and quality of the Syracuse student experience inside and outside the classroom.”

Harris did not mention financial aid as the major factor behind SU’s cost of attendance, instead justifying the cost by mentioning “the value and quality of the Syracuse student experience.”

Is SU’s high cost due to its highest expense being undergraduate financial aid, as Wilder claims, or is it due to the improvement of the overall student experience, as Harris said?

And if the latter, is the student experience at Syracuse University really worth nearly $80,000?

SU “prides itself” on the resources, culture and opportunities for growth it provides its students, staff and faculty. The university gives 83% of students financial aid, and aims to provide students with a “tailored academic experience.”

While many students are given financial aid, this cannot entirely explain the cost of attendance for SU. From walking around campus and going inside some of the newly renovated buildings, such as the Schine Student Center, it’s clear that the university puts a lot of their revenue toward renovations and modernizing older buildings.

During football games in the Dome this season, SU has been playing a promotional video on the big screen about the new John A. Lally Athletics Complex, which “is currently undergoing a multi-million, multi-year transformation that has one singular goal — elevating the student-athlete experience.” While school spirit and supporting our athletes is a major part of the student experience here at SU, it seems that a huge portion of student tuition goes toward benefiting the small minority of these 600 student-athletes. There are over 20,000 non-athlete students who deserve a similar amount of attention and support, if not more.

Ryan Murphy, a sophomore at SU, said decreasing the cost of tuition would allow more students from different backgrounds to have the chance to attend and would make it unnecessary to offer huge amounts of financial aid.

“The school promotes being a diverse campus but how can it be diverse when the tuition forces students around the world to cross Syracuse off their list of colleges to apply for?” Murphy said.

Trying to defend the cost of attendance by saying that it goes towards students’ financial aid, which helps diversify the student population, is not a valid argument. If tuition was lowered, less students would struggle to pay for their education and SU would be accessible to students in financial need.

Simply living on campus is another financial dilemma for students. According to an SU policy, students are required to live on campus for their first two years. By forcing students to live on campus their freshmen and sophomore years, it also makes students more likely to pay for a dining plan, since driving to the grocery store and cooking is nearly impossible unless you live on South Campus. Students are required to pay for a $1200 meal plan per semester their freshmen year.

I currently live on South Campus and have no meal plan. Going to the grocery store and cooking my own food costs my parents far less money than the meal plan I was paying for as a freshman last year.

Students are also not allowed to have a car on campus during their freshman year. If they have a car during their sophomore year, the cheapest parking pass is $120 at Skytop for the year, which can be far from their housing. If students park on main campus for the day, they will most likely get a ticket.

There are many more examples of costs not included in SU’s tuition price. While Harris said the increased revenue for the school can elevate the value of SU’s student experience, he disagreed with the expenses that students must continue to pay in order to fulfill and enjoy this so-called “value and quality of Syracuse student experience.”

From my own experience thus far as an SU student, the quality of my student experience has been memorable from the games, the free student-run organizations and most of all, from the fellow students I have met at SU. The university should also give a quality student experience from the $80,000 students pay.

When applying for college, many people choose not to apply to Syracuse because it is so expensive. SU has a lot of work to do in rethinking its cost of attendance. By pushing the issue aside and defending the absurd costs, SU is only making itself less prestigious and unreachable to prospective students while also making it financially challenging for current SU families.

Jean Aiello is a Sophomore magazine, news and digital journalism major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at jdaiello@syr.edu.

Published on September 27, 2022 at 12:53 am