Recent Tuition Cuts Are Negatively Effecting Students

Rutgers Students Find Recent Tuition Cuts Difficult To Deal With

Rutgers University has experienced recent tuition hikes, and the students are not happy.

Students attending Rutgers were interviewed about their thoughts on the hike.

Jackie Burzichelli, a senior noted that Rutgers tuition hikes have been going on for years, and each time she found herself taking out loans.

“I’m glad that I’m a senior”, Burzichelli said. “I’m already close to $30,000 in debt and I don’t need anymore. It’s ridiculous. It’s affecting me and my parents. I will leave college with a lot of loans to pay back”

Another senior, Meg Pesari said that the tuition hikes would be difficult and that her parents would have to, yet again, shell out money.

“Yeah, it’s like c’mon. I have three other siblings that’s going college and my parents can’t keep paying for this”

After getting a hold of former Rutgers Student Ebony Crystal Riggs, who graduated this past summer, she expressed general disinterest. To her, tuition hikes were not uncommon and not of much importance.

“Tuition goes up all the time. It is what it is. It went up when I was there and I just did Work Study”.

Despite this, Riggs also noted that she had to do Work Study each semester her entire time attending Rutgers, so the tuition hike did hurt her pockets.

Student Nadee Lewis who is graduating in May 2017 proclaimed that the recent tuition hike, as with all the others of the past, make it particularly hard to maintain some level of financial stability when it comes to payments.

Her financial aid as of late has not been a consistent stream of guaranteed income and it doesn't help that this additional funding does not seem to take into account the rising costs of this institution.

"Some of us just don't have the resources to accommodate our finances"  Lewis said.

Her friend Nataisiah Davis also graduating in 2017 said that rise in tuition has affected her greatly because her financial aid couldn't cover everything, so in order to receive more finances, she had to appeal to the financial aid office and that still wasn't enough.

So for Davis, the finances needed to come out of pocket which was a hard task on its own.

"It just makes it hard for you to guarantee you will be able to attend school."

According to Adam Clark from NJ.com, “Tuition and fees for Rutgers University's undergraduate students in New Brunswick will increase 1.7 percent, or about $241 this fall”.

“The university is also raising the price tag for room and board by 1.7 percent. With room and board considered, the average undergraduate from New Jersey on the New Brunswick campus will see a total bill of $26,632, or $447 more than last year.”