How do you save in times of recession? Is life going to be a tab bit different from what it was? After years of booming, economies around the world are feeling the heat. College life will look different from now on. Things will have changes drastically at colleges and universities.
With pay cuts, retirement fund halts and no students aid to offer, colleges are cutting down on many things to save money. A student of Wooster junior helps to paint the railing of the stadium as the college is offering them minimum-wages jobs on the campus.
To cut costs, the University of Washington, cut off their landlines in the communications department. While the phones remain in the common rooms for staff to use them, personal landline phones are gone. This saves the university about $1,100 a month.
At another college, the woman’s swim team is holding virtual swim teams meet with another college 112 miles apart. These colleges are Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa and Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania, the women’s swim team held a “virtual swim meet” with about 112 miles away. Each team here, swam in their college pools and then compared the timings over the Internet. The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, has cancelled the traditional bus tour of the state for new faculty members. This is because they don’t their staff members to roam the city and lie in hotels in times like these.
Everyone is living on a tight budget now. Housekeeping rules are being relaxed and students wont have their windows cleaned now. The colleges will save about $22,300 by this and some colleges will have their sidewalks cleaned once in a year instead of twice. Some places the trash will be picked up once in three days instead of everyday.
At Carlton college, each teacher had a course load divided as five per teacher but now they go back to having six each.
Some colleges are not offering free ESPN and HBO to students in their dorms. After years of competing for better living facilities in dorms across colleges, the campus lives have changed. There is not going to be any free laundry services etc.
These are the beginnings. Many more privileges could be cut off in future. But we know that recession is not permanent and things will be fine over a few years time. students are already opting for colleges which have lower fee rates and so on. These are difficult times and we must brace ourselves. What should matter more is that the education system is cutting down on its quality with cut offs like these.
Similarly students should not, not put in their efforts like before. Pay cuts or cost cutting never harmed a college’s reputation and therefore, graduating from there will not harm any student’s reputation either.
It is all about the right timing. Things will happen in their own time and we cannot possible rush anything even if we want to. It is best to accept the situation and work our way towards it.