Why are Quinnipiac students charged extra for being good? As a full time undergraduate student, only 16 credits are included in your already expensive tuition, and if you want to take more classes, you have to pay an extra $450 per credit.
Is it so bad, to want to register for more than 16 credits that students need to be financially punished for doing so?
According to administrators at Quinnipiac there has to be a limit somewhere, because extra teachers need to be hired and extra costs follow with that.
The school also claims that the students who take heavy course loads are the ones that dropped one or two classes at the beginning of their study, and need to take more than 16 credits to graduate.
Therefore they should be punished. However, there are many students who need to take heavy course loads for other reasons. Many students transferred to Quinnipiac and have experienced the fact of not getting all their credits evaluated and accepted.
Because of this, they might have to take 17 or 18 credits every semester in order to graduate on time, something that is totally out of their control.
Of course, they could chose to stay an extra semester at Quinnipiac instead, paying another $9,420 for tuition, and maybe that’s what the school wants, so they can increase their profits.
Another reason to take an overload might be that you change your major, and end up having to take more classes than you originally planned.
Or you might be in the transition between the old system and the new system and find out that you need to have a minor as well to graduate, something that immediately adds on some extra credits on top of your regular course load.
Administrators at Quinnipiac explain that if the limit for how many credits are allowed without any extra cost would be raised to, say 18 credits, tuition would also need to be raised in general.
In comparison to other four year private institutions, Quinnipiac’s tuition is already above average.
In Connecticut, two four year private institutions that are less expensive than Quinnipiac are St. Joseph’s College and Sacred Heart University, and they both let their students register for 18 credits at no extra charge. Most other schools limit is at 18 as well, but of course their tuition might be as high as Cornell’s $26,000.
Many students at Quinnipiac are upset that the limit is at 16 credits instead of 18. The reason for that is the point that we are paying enough already, and we are left with the feeling that Quinnipiac tries to cheat us for money in any way they can.