Rising tuition: Is it worth it?

Higher education is not cheap. Ask nearly every person in the world and they will tell you as much. Adults can spend their entire lives trying to pay off student loans after graduation, so when the university that you’re attending gets more expensive, how should you react?

First, look at why tuition is rising. In our case, we at have just restarted the football program and the marching band with a brand new stadium to boot, and on top of that, a new fine arts center is in the making.

Next, how do those additions affect your life as an ETSU student? Even if you’re a business major with no artistic talent and you despise football, you can’t avoid the effects of these things. Other students on football and band scholarships will start to come into the various colleges, and more students is almost always better for a university. More students means more money coming in and more people to split that tuition cost with, but of course that tuition cost tends to rise rather than fall. For the ones effected more directly, such as fine art students and athletes, this shows a sign of improvement and growth in the school.

Finally, is the rise in tuition worth it? It is all a matter of perspective. I am personally a music major who loves marching band, so I do consider these additions as well worth the price. But that hypothetical business major may disagree. Football brings in more students, but it also brings in traffic and a lot of noise that some students may not appreciate. This is understandable.

I remember a time in high school where the school spent almost all of its budget on sports, leaving the arts program out to dry. For most of my time back in high school, I nearly hated the athletics department, and it wasn’t even my money paying for it. People without a direct tie to the arts or football may feel even more animosity as they spend thousands more on tuition.

My response is that unlike high school, we all pay for each other. I could not care less about the medical colleges here on campus, but I’m fairly confident my money has bought resources for them too. Plus, these thousands of supporters coming in to watch football in the new stadium are putting a lot of money into this university roughly every other week.

While you may not be an artist, football player or football fanatic, their time to pay for your new business center or whatever your particular department needs will surely come.