Break This: Graduation Fees

I attend Brigham Young University, which admittedly has relatively low tuition. However, they do charge a $15 fee for graduation. A $15 fee just to graduate! They want us to graduate! They warn you when you begin getting too many credits that you need to hurry up and get out of here. And yet they want to charge you to do the very thing they are pressuring you into.

I did some quick calculations today and decided BYU makes about $128,000 per year from graduation fees. This is a large University that surely brings in tens of millions of dollars in tuition each year. Are they really that hard up for the $128,000? With all these fees it feels like I am going to school at a bank.

So what can be done? Probably not much. It's not like there's any way around it, and boycotting the fee will really only just keep you from graduating. However, there have been internal talks at BYU about getting rid of the fee. The division of Student Academic and Advisement Services are the ones who manage the graduation process. You could try submitting your opinions on the subject at http://saas.byu.edu. Go there and use their feedback system to voice your opposition to this pointless barrier to graduation.