Students should reconsider ridiculous cost

I was amused to no end reading that GW officials would like to dispute CNN’s finding that their University levies the highest tuition rate in the nation. It is laughable that GW staff would like to dispute the technicality of this ranking, when this University clearly uses one of the most outrageous fee structures in worldwide academia.

During my time at GW, I met many students who viewed the school as more of a corporation than a place of learning, and there is no better descriptor. As a transfer student from GW to the University of Sussex in England, it is refreshing to live on a campus where students are not forced to give thousands of dollars toward a dining program where the offerings of healthy food are slim. It is invigorating to participate in seminar discussions with professors who are actively engaged with their small, group-style classes. We may not have the fancy chairs and excessive features of preposterous GW classrooms, yet our studies are undertaken at a fraction of the cost.

I would urge anyone who finds him or herself strapped for cash to seriously re-examine whether GW is providing you with almost $200,000 worth of services, academic or other. The notion that students of any means would pay this amount toward undergraduate study is laughable elsewhere in the world and seen as typical American excess. Unfortunately, it is all too real and will continue as long as students renew their enrollments.

-Clair Viglione, GW student, 2003-2005

Improve quality to justify tuition

GW tuition may not be the highest in the country, as CNN reports, but there is no doubt that it is extremely high. The real issue, however, is not cost, but what students get for their money.

Right now, the University does not offer very good bang for the buck – it is not even ranked in the top 50 by U.S. News and World Report among colleges. Efforts to control costs are meaningless unless academic value improves, because top students will not attend an inferior school even at a low price.

On the other hand, if GW improves the academic value it offers, then the cost problem solves itself. This is because top students will gladly pay whatever it takes to attend a superior school.

-James Perry, Alumnus