It can sometimes be difficult, when your friends go on about their private school’s waffle bar or smart boards, to not feel like you’re getting gypped by your public university. After all, you guys might pay similar tuitions, or maybe you pay less but could have taken out the loans to cover the cost of their school, and they’ve got all the bells and whistles and you’ve got, well, an education. It can be suffocating, sitting in lines waiting for services that should be easily accessible because your school isn’t flushed with workers, just a few work-study paid student employees. It can be disheartening, to not have the best resources for all the fun “college experience” tools that all your friends are learning to master. Meanwhile, you’re still learning how to master the school’s website (which hasn’t been updated since 2009, or so you’re left to assume since it works best on your Internet Explorer browser). You might find yourself wondering if it was worth it, and it absolutely is.
Hunter College, or as I call it, The Other Purple New York School, is a member of the greater CUNY system, or City Universit[ies] of New York. It is also my school, where I decided, after months of deciding and applying, and subsequently eight college acceptances, I wanted to spend the next four years. It is a public university, attended mostly by locals— and me. Sometimes I feel disoriented by the lack of modern technology and wonky classrooms; it’s like my high school, all over again. There isn’t a campus, given the location squat in the middle of the Upper East Side, and there isn’t, in turn, much campus life. The system is old and functions well enough, though certainly not without a little rust.
I sometimes wonder why I didn’t just go to Wagner or Pace, where I applied and was received with open arms, flushed with academic scholarships and financial aid, as well as pamphlets and t-shirts and fun little goody bags with stylus pens and sunglasses. It’s only in my now deeply socialist days that I look back on my choice with great pride because I know my tuition helps to pay for what it can, and because I encourage everyone to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves “Who am I paying tuition?”
My professors come to class winded, having ridden their bike from Queens, ranting about the MTA and wearing too-large winter boots. My professors throw their books down in the way that I imagine only professors can do, and they crack out their old PC, and the fun begins. They are passionate, they are proud, and they are wildly underpaid. They work for you, not because they don’t have other options; in fact, most of them have other jobs that they could use to sustain themselves full-time if they wanted to. They teach for you because they love that you made it there, to their class, and they’re excited to provide you with the best bang for your buck. They want you to succeed just as much as you want to. Some of the best in their fields, and yet not at all interested in sucking the money from your pockets. They are struggling to deal with the lack of Smart(stuff) and easy-to-navigate websites and services just as much as you are. They put up with it, just as you do, because they know that the value of an education can’t be measured in touch screens and high Mbps, but in the knowledge and experience you gain.
This past year, the state of New York declared that they were working on a three year plan to completely eliminate the cost of tuition for all New York residents attending public schools. That means relying solely on money from taxpayers and donating alumni- oh, and out-of-state suckers like myself. I could complain about how I pay New York State taxes (I work, live, breathe, eat, and sleep on New York State taxes), but don’t receive any of the benefits that some of my other classmates will. Or I could look at the bigger picture with a little more positivity; I can afford it, and some of my classmates are my age and travel an hour and a half from wherever their home may be to get there, and have been paying for their tuition with money from their own pockets.
Some of my classmates have children, and some of my classmates live in the projects. They deserve a good education just as much as I do, which is why I will swallow my already meager tuition for their sake, until I can eventually fill out the 30 pages of paperwork that I have to submit, which won’t even guarantee me New York State residency. None of us need those bells and whistles that so many private schools offer, and while they are certainly enticing, my degree will read that I graduated with a high GPA from a credible institution, not that I had crepes in my school’s cafeteria. Quality, over quantity, in this case, is what matters. While sometimes disorienting, my school and my professors are of Grade A quality.
