Something to consider the next time you hammer an alarm clock’s snooze button in the morning: You’re not only sleeping through classwork, you’re also wasting money.
An undergraduate student at the University of Oregon pays $2,848 for a 16-credit term, according to the Office of the Registrar’s website. While that figure doesn’t take into account incidental fees such as tickets to football games or the maintenance costs in keeping the Student Recreation Center dry, it is nearly three grand for 10 weeks of class.
Oregonians wincing at their billing statements at the end of each term may be thankful they’re at least paying a resident’s rate. The tab for an out-of-towner stands at $9,728 for the same workload.
Taking the logical step further: How does that money split per lecture? Assuming a full-time term consists of 16 credits, four four-credit classes that each meet about twice a week for a total of eight classes per week or 80 classes per term. For Oregonians, tuition divided by the total number of classes puts a $35.60 price tag for each class. Not that you could spend it on anything else, but for the same price you could buy the required novels for your English class. Or get the most basic mold of UrbanEars headphones in whatever candied color you could ever want. It’s also a pretty solid date night here in town.
“I’m lucky,” said Stephen Nishida, a sophomore business major from Beaverton. “I’m getting my classes paid for, but I don’t want to waste that person’s money. If you don’t go, you’re just throwing money down the drain.”
Meanwhile, out-of-towners, just under half the total undergrad enrollment, shell out quite a bit more: $121.60 to be exact. If you’re like most college students, you will likely rack up a few absences this term because you’re either sick, hungover or just not ready to break away from a “Game of Thrones” marathon. But even at the cost, sometimes a little class triage is necessary.
“It’s a concern because it seems like a waste of money,” said Nhi Nguyen, a freshman human physiology major. “But there are certain kinds of classes I choose to skip, and others I wouldn’t.”
Many undergraduates still wading through their general education credits find that the high-enrollment lectures tend to be easier to sweep under the rug.
“It’s definitely easier to skip those,” said Laura Ticho, pre-family and human services major and native of Illinois. “I would never skip a science lab because it’s difficult to catch up. But a large philosophy class that posts all the Power Points on Blackboard and tells you the reading, I don’t mind skipping.”
Instructors do take notice when the lecture hall begins to sag as the term gets underway.
“It does seem to be the case that on quiz days I definitely notice more people,” said Sanjay Srivastava, associate professor in the Department of Psychology.
Srivastava teaches Psychology 202, Mind and Society to 500 students in Columbia 150.
“It’s their money, or it’s their parents’ money or it’s the state’s money. I don’t want to moralize, but I don’t think they’re getting the education they could out of it if they’re skipping for no good reason,” Srivastava said.
Sara Hodges, another associate professor from the Department of Psychology, agrees.
“Particularly right after a midterm, attendance tends to drop off. Students say, ‘Oh, I just studied so hard I deserve a break,’” she said. “I think students learn over the course of their college careers just how costly it could be to miss their classes.”
As a whole, however, classes at Oregon’s public universities are nearly a blue-light special compared to other major public schools on the West Coast. For in-state residents, Oregon State costs a mere $27.75 per class, but head out in any other direction you will find the going rates for classes to be higher across the board.
For instance, Washingtonians pay about $45 per lecture at schools in their home state. In Arizona, classes range from high $30s to low $40s, with the University of Arizona tapping its students for $41.85 per class. Utah has the cheapest classes in all, $27 for residents and $85 for non-residents. Oregon State, Arizona State and Utah are the only Pac-12 schools that offer classes for less than $100 for out-of-state students.
Students attending a University in California, on the other hand, drop quite a bit more money for their classes. Californians who attend UCLA or UC Berkeley both weigh in at $46.75 per class. However, Stanford and the University of Southern California take the top two spots in expensive lectures to miss, while charging residents and non-residents equally. Stanford, which requires that its students pay for an entire school year at a time, costs $177.88 per lecture, and USC tops even that at $182.18.
At the end of the day, though, students should understand that lectures are worth the costs, both financially and for their college careers.
“I understand going just for the grades,” Nishida said. “But it’s also about learning.”