[Disclaimer: This article was originally published for April Fools’ Day, and it should not be interpreted as factual reporting.]
For years, students and their families have endured rapidly increasing postsecondary education costs. Members of the McDaniel community are no exception, with the net price of McDaniel again increasing this coming year; however, administration has finally apologized for these exploding costs.
Dorothy Sullivan, one of McDaniel’s financial advisors, gave insight to the apology, saying, “We know McDaniel is an expensive place to be, and we’re sorry about that. I mean, that won’t prevent us from being pulled in to the overall unsustainable cost models of higher education as we know it, but maybe students will feel better knowing that we occasionally care about their buckling finances.”
Nationally, education prices are expanding rapidly. Dr. Molo Trinsel, president of Noute University, made national press when she stated, “tuition prices really suck, man” at a conference attempting to provide college administrators with ways to prevent hordes of colleges from failing in the near future. “I guess we’re just going to have to try to make our ‘token successful alumni’ foot the bill for a while and see where that gets us,” Trinsel added.
Nonetheless, administration would like to let students know that it is sorry for obvious price increases. Stan Rouse, the main-man of bludgeoning, er, budgeting, at McDaniel says, “We really are sympathetic to students who pay more and more for the same exact education. Unfortunately, we couldn’t think of any more hidden fees to introduce in place of the more obvious increases. To compensate, we did make information on the increase available in a secret room in an undisclosed location.”
These hidden fees, as many know, are the ‘actually coming to McDaniel’ fee, the ‘actually using your dorm furniture’ fee, the ‘not liking a class’ fee, and the ‘forgetting to pay for a parking pass’ fee, among others.
It turns that it takes a formidable level of creativity to create at least mildly justifiable reasons to charge students for being human. However, according to Rouse, in the future, students could be charged for missing classes, taking more than five classes with non-adjunct professors throughout their time at McDaniel, and for complaining about the institution in general.
“As we move forward, we hope that we can create the appearance that price increases are slowing down for reasons other than market forces,” says Rouse. “There is a burden on the shoulders of students, but an even greater one on mine. I work hard to think of new, innovative ways to charge people.”
Rouse declined to answer further questions about finance and salaries at McDaniel. He looks forward to a bright future of “…fail-proof, absolutely sustainable increases in price to the product… err education… that McDaniel sells to misguided young people.”
