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If you have insurance from somewhere else and decline the student insurance offered by Cornell, they're going to charge a $350 fine (I mean fee). So you get billed for not using their service.
Yes, I explained it above. The students with insurance are now being fined because Cornell is losing revenue due to Obamacare.
That's an extremely cynical view. A fine is a penalty for wrongdoing. No one is being accused of wrongdoing. Nobody is being fined.
The school medical facilities must be funded. Yes, Obamacare has changed things. Things always change. The shortfall must be addressed. The school could have recovered the losses by increasing tuition fees on everyone, but it's being more direct in applying the fees. I don't see a problem with it.
Plenty of Cornell students do care, and are now raising hell over the fee (when it comes to caring about this issue, this group, and their parents, are who matter most). Take a look at the Cornell Daily Sun site for stories of their reactions. And while an added fee may not mean much for someone who can afford to pay tuition and fees out of pocket for Cornell, it does matter for many who are on financial aid/have outside insurance and for whom $350 is a significant and unexpected commitment. But this is just the beginning. If Cornell gets away with this, look for other universities, public and private, to try the same thing. Still, I admit that the fee isn't insurmountable for most. Rather, its the concept of this fee that is so disgusting and outrageous to many: a fee for not using the University's health insurance plan, which 70% of undergraduates are exempted from because they have their own outside health insurance.
I don't see it this way. The "concept" of the fee was mentioned earlier: "They need some cash" for the medical facilities. Where do you suggest they get it? Maybe they should have raised the fees for the university program, and left the others alone. Maybe not. I don't know, but I do know that trying to put a political slant on a school business decision is ridiculous.
In 1970, you could go to Ohio State University, work 20 hours a week at the then minimum wage and it would pay your tuition, books, room and board and leave you with money left over. In 1970, 41% of entry-level jobs required a bachelor's degree, now it's 71%.
Since then, the minimum wage has risen by under 400%. The average cost of a college education has risen almost 1000%
Go check out the cost of textbooks at a student bookstore at any major university while keeping in mind, that at the end of the quarter/semester, the student bookstore is likely to refuse to buy back at least a few of a students books because "a new edition is coming out." Every undergrad at every university is getting ripped off by a lot more than $350 every year in text books alone.
In 2013, Forbes argued that the more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt is a drag on the rest of the economy considering that massive amount of underemployment recent college graduates face in this economy.
Now, complaining about $350 at a private, Ivy League school, whose graduates will have all kinds of additional doors opened for them by virtue of having gone to an Ivy League school, as opposed to say, a SUNY Albany grad, is akin to complaining that your exclusive, restricted country club just raised their greens fees. Cornell is a highly competitive, highly selective elite private school. If they really wanted an additional $350 that badly, they could simply and very easily up their tuition by that much.
Exactly. They could have upped everyone's tuition by $500 without losing a student. This is a pricing strategy, not a political statement.
I just can't believe the extent that some are going to in this forum to justify the University's actions in this regard. It's mind-boggling.
What's mind boggling is that anyone would expect a university to need to justify raising fees to cover costs. It's a business. It has to hire people and pay them. You know, good ol' capitalism. The people that end up being charged are always going to complain. Is this really news? The fee is insignificant, and the politicization is silly. "Oh no Mr. Bill...not Obamacare...oh no................................................ ......."
That's all fine and dandy for future students and parents of students, but what about those students who are there now and who are having a fee forced on them that they were not expected to pay? They shouldn't have to just up and leave due to financial mismanagement by the University, especially in light of the already high cost of attendance (and rising) at the University.
If this is the fee someone is most concerned about, then they haven't been paying attention to the rising cost of tuition. It costs a student much more to be enrolled in a college health plan.
If this is the fee someone is most concerned about, then they haven't been paying attention to the rising cost of tuition. It costs a student much more to be enrolled in a college health plan.
I doubt anyone going to Cornell is concerned about $350 yr. It's Obamacare. Time to repeal because of these poor students and their parents being punished by evil leftists for being forced at gunpoint to pay for their kids' insurance because of an evil communist plot called Obamacare.
What's mind boggling is that anyone would expect a university to need to justify raising fees to cover costs. It's a business. It has to hire people and pay them. You know, good ol' capitalism. The people that end up being charged are always going to complain. Is this really news? The fee is insignificant, and the politicization is silly. "Oh no Mr. Bill...not Obamacare...oh no................................................ ......."
Please. This fee, which is so out of whack with standard business practice (also, note, standard businesses don't stay in business very long after engaging in the kind of financial mismanagement Cornell did for its health services), is going to have an impact on real people. Not to mention that the University is using this fee to pay for an expansion that its customer base neither wanted nor asked for! But, to be clear, the University obviously feels the need to justify the fee as they are scrambling to do so now. Please see: Cornell Daily Sun for full coverage on the events; that's far from mind-boggling . At the end of the day, the students/their parents are the University's customer base. If the University wants to keep these customers happy (note, while the University's enrollment base may not be hurt much by this move, decisions like this threaten the University's bottom line in another way, specifically via alumni support), they better justify this decision better than they have been.
Last edited by prospectheightsresident; 02-14-2015 at 09:36 AM..
It costs a student much more to be enrolled in a college health plan.
That's exactly the point, and is why 70% of undergraduates at Cornell DO NOT choose to enroll in the school's health plan; its too expensive.
As for tuition increases, while high, at least higher than the rate of inflation increases have been standard practice for many years now, they are expected. This move, which affects students/families who have long been told that they don't have to worry about health care fees if they have outside insurance, does.
More fundamentally, I don't know why people on here keep bringing up the tuition issue without explaining that most of Cornell students receive some form of grant-based financial aid. A significant portion of these students have all of their financial need met by the University. There's a reason why the University didn't cover this fee in a new tuition raise: because, as I explained before, not everyone would be paying the fee due to financial aid grants, etc. By including as a separate fee that is not covered by financial aid, the University ensures that everyone pays this fee.
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. At the end of the day, the students/their parents are the University's customer base. If the University wants to keep these customers happy (note, while the University's enrollment base may not be hurt much by this move, decisions like this threaten the University's bottom line in another way, specifically via alumni support), they better justify this decision better than they have been.
