I’m about to send the letter to Pitt asking for my money
back. I’m really a little nervous, the administration is this ominous
conglomerate and when you poke the beast, you run the risk of actually eliciting
a response. I haven’t had really a good time ever communicating with them.
Usually I’m asking if it’s ok to do something on campus, like bringing a
penguin, and usually their job it to suck the fun and goodness out of things
for the sake of protecting themselves legally. Once I was called to the
business school’s office of the dean out of the blue. I was nervous then, like
going to the principal’s office. I hadn’t done anything wrong, some employer
had called him to complain that I was being too aggressive in seeking a job. Those
people were Delliote and they are idiots. Because they didn’t talk directly to
me, and they do auditing via inquiry, and I was doing a fantastic job of
inquiring my way to a job. But the business dean was really nice and helpful.
I’m sitting here in
my car near wifi trying to figure out who to send it to. You can’t contact the
Chancellor directly, nor the Board of Trustees, but I’ll send it to the Provost
(whatever the hell that is) and a few semi-provi, and the office of Finance. I
mean they’ll be the ones cutting me the check.
Also sending it to the Pitt News, because I think people
should know that their education isn’t worth what they’re paying. And the
Pittsburgh Gazette, because I think everyone should know that education isn’t
worth the sticker price. Also the more people that see the letter then the
better chance it gets to the right people and the more people see it then the
more people talk about it. Like sex or depression.
Here’s the final letter.
Dear Pitt,
I recently graduated from the University of Pittsburgh's
College of Business Administration in December as a marketing major. My first
loan repayment is coming up on July 22nd, however I'd like to ask for a refund.
I understand this is pretty unorthodox and there's nothing
really I can do except ask. I also know that my loan is through the loan
provider Nelnet and the federal government. However the University set the
prices and I'd like to express my dissatisfaction with Pitt and I'd be remiss
if I didn't request a refund.
I’ve been to many classes that I felt didn’t do anything to
contribute to my growth as a person and wasted my time. I’ve had terribly
uninteresting professors (ever sit in on an Intro to Micro or Macro Economics
Class?) whose job it is to excite me about learning, professors with some “antiquated”
(read: sexist) ideas about the world, and professors who have presented
information that is just plain wrong that a quick Google search would correct. I’ve
seen friends develop drinking problems, and spent a lot of my first semesters
alone in my dorm wondering if I’ve made the right decision to come to Pitt. I’ve
struggled with communicating with administration, trying to put on events or
just get a simple review of a professor. And I’m sure you know all of these
problems, you do surveys all the time. But my main concern is the price. Pitt
is the most expensive public school in the country. What you gave me was not
worth $90,000.
We can get into a pretty big game of "what if" if
we try to explore what would've happened if I dropped out or transferred or
never attended a college. I don’t think it’s productive to examine those
scenarios, because they’re not reality. I'm aware that I signed a promissory
note and that I'm obliged to pay the loan back. And I will. But I consider Pitt
not worth the cost and am upset with my price.
As a seventeen year old choosing a college you don't really
know how much $90,000 is, so a lot of the financial thinking is left to the
parents. My parents and all parents,
want the best education they can give to their child. The idea being that a
better education leads to more opportunities and a richer life. However, with
$33,000 (and increasing with interest) in debt, I don’t really feel free to
pursue the things I want. I feel shackled to this growing financial burden. I
have to find a steady job and start paying that money back.
Personally I don’t want a steady job. I want to hike the
Pacific Coast Trail, make music all day, tour the country doing stand-up, see
the world, or read and write. I don’t mind having a job, I’ve been a chef, a
telemarketer, and a digital marketing coordinator. I enjoy working! But when
20% of my income has to go to a loan I didn’t really feel like I got anything
out of, it feels like there’s a penalty just for being alive. I feel like my
degree is actually limiting me rather than expanding my opportunities. We live
in a world where you can get a refund for almost anything, so I figured education
should be satisfaction guaranteed as well.
I know a good counter-argument to this thought process would
be “Hey you ordered the sandwich, ate the whole sandwich and now you want your
money back?” Well yes. The sandwich gave me mild food poisoning. But I was
starving so I kind of had to eat it. And it was a sandwich where you had to pay
up front, per bite, and each bite was $7,500. And if you stopped eating the
sandwich half way then you still had to pay for those bites if you didn't like
it. And it’s not a sandwich, its education and it’s my life.
I did have some amazing opportunities that helped me grow as
a person at Pitt. I served as a director on the board of one of the nation’s
best college radio stations, WPTS Radio. I volunteered in a lab studying
disease transmission in sexually cannibalistic spiders, and I got an internship
with a great global risk management company. I got as much out of Pitt as I
could and I enjoyed many things, but it wasn’t worth what I paid. (Also notice
that those were all non-classroom experiences, yet my degree is completely
dependent on what I do in class.)
I currently work as a strawberry consultant where I inspect
crops for disease and pests. It's a good
job but doesn't pay amazingly. I make approximately $16 an hour and work 40-50
hours a week. That's ok money for a recent graduate but my repayments are
coming in at $370 a month. I qualify to lower them, but of course when you do
you end up paying for much longer and much more. Interest built on being poor,
keeping me poor.
If you’d like, I’ll return my diploma, discontinue the use
of Pitt on my resume, and you can wipe me from the academic records. I know I
can’t return those experiences I had, so this may be more symbolic than
pragmatic, but if it makes you feel better I can certainly concede.
Again, I realize this is odd, and in all honesty I don’t
expect you to reimburse me. But if you value the satisfaction of your students,
if you guarantee that a Pitt diploma is worth the sticker price, you’ll give
serious consideration to this. Please don’t give me a stock email reply, I’d
rather open up a conversation about the insane cost of tuition and how Pitt can
be the University to change that. I want Pitt to be the best it can be and
really I’d love to help out to find ways to significantly lower the price for
students.
Thank you,
-Taylor Nodell
