If you’ve ever tried to enroll in summer classes, you know how astronomically expensive they are even though they’re shorter than fall and spring classes. For 2019, ETSU charges a little over $400 per credit hour in the summer. Just for one three credit hour class, it would cost students about $1,200.
To top it off, students have to take at least six credit hours to be eligible for the Hope scholarship or any financial aid in the summer. Students also have to pay for the entire expense of the classes upfront; there’s no option for a payment plan. If students receive scholarships or financial aid, students are still required to pay the full price of classes upfront, and they’ll be refunded the money after the fact.
If students use the Hope scholarship for summer or winter classes, it counts it as one of the eight semesters or toward the max credit hours they can use with the Hope, meaning it’s possible to run out of the Hope in future semesters if students continue to take summer or winter classes.
The fact that there isn’t a payment plan option for students is incredibly unfair for students. It’s ridiculous to expect students to pay that much money upfront all at once. Most, if not all, students aren’t going to have that much money sitting around to drop at once, and not everyone has family members who can afford to help them financially either.
Students who want to live on campus during the summer are also required to take nine credit hours, which costs about $3,600 already without any added housing costs. Students shouldn’t be required to enroll in that many credit hours when summer classes and housing are already expensive. Students taking any summer classes on campus should be allowed to live on campus because many people aren’t able to commute in the summer.
Summer and winter courses are expensive and unfair to students in many ways. ETSU needs to adjust its policies to be more fair to the students that pay a lot of money to go to school here.
