2008 Woodie Awards
You may not be a resident
Brian Heinemann
Issue date: 2/14/08 Section: Opinion
While Kirkwood Community College preaches a "Start here, go anywhere" mentality, four-year universities do not always make the transition easy for prospective students.
All state universities, including but certainly not limited to the University of Iowa, have extremely strict in-state resident guidelines that may deter people. Kirkwood has a very liberal policy regarding residency status, as a student only has to live in the state of Iowa-for 90 consecutive days.
U of I and other state schools, however, make gaining residency incredibly complicated in the interest of filling their schools' offers with money. For somebody moving to the state of Iowa and wanting to enroll in one of the many four-year colleges, it is not simply a matter of living in the state for a certain number of days.
If you did not graduate from a high school in the state you have a major uphill battle to climb. Buying a house in the state is not good enough to establish residency. Neither being a registered voter nor having an Iowa driver's license holds any weight in becoming a resident. The list of items that have no bearing on residency is staggering and seems designed to force as many students as possible to pay an outrageous sum of money to attend their school.
At Kirkwood being an out-of-state student is not that big of a financial burden. Paying around $200 per credit hour opposed to right around $100 is not that large of a jump. At the University of Iowa, however, tuition is tripled for a student who is not an in-state resident. While everybody who is a resident of Iowa pays $4,000 a semester for their program, a student who is out-of-state has to pay $12,000 every single semester to get the exact same education.
The process of gaining residency, at least to the satisfaction of state schools, is a complicated one. The best option is to drop down to being a part-time Kirkwood student and get a full-time job somewhere in Iowa. You are not allowed to go to school more than six credit hours while working said full-time job, meaning you need to put your education on hold to show colleges you are in Iowa to work.
When I start at Iowa, I will have lived in the state for almost two years, renting an apartment and possibly owning a house by that point. I will have owned a car in the state for the entire time, been a registered voter the entire time and worked in the state, albeit part-time, the whole two years. According to the University of Iowa, that simply is not good enough and I will get to pay triple what everybody else will, simply because they feel I moved to the state for educational purposes.
Although it will be a massive financial undertaking for me, the university will get exactly what they want-an absurd amount of money from somebody who just wants the chance to further his education.
All state universities, including but certainly not limited to the University of Iowa, have extremely strict in-state resident guidelines that may deter people. Kirkwood has a very liberal policy regarding residency status, as a student only has to live in the state of Iowa-for 90 consecutive days.
U of I and other state schools, however, make gaining residency incredibly complicated in the interest of filling their schools' offers with money. For somebody moving to the state of Iowa and wanting to enroll in one of the many four-year colleges, it is not simply a matter of living in the state for a certain number of days.
If you did not graduate from a high school in the state you have a major uphill battle to climb. Buying a house in the state is not good enough to establish residency. Neither being a registered voter nor having an Iowa driver's license holds any weight in becoming a resident. The list of items that have no bearing on residency is staggering and seems designed to force as many students as possible to pay an outrageous sum of money to attend their school.
At Kirkwood being an out-of-state student is not that big of a financial burden. Paying around $200 per credit hour opposed to right around $100 is not that large of a jump. At the University of Iowa, however, tuition is tripled for a student who is not an in-state resident. While everybody who is a resident of Iowa pays $4,000 a semester for their program, a student who is out-of-state has to pay $12,000 every single semester to get the exact same education.
The process of gaining residency, at least to the satisfaction of state schools, is a complicated one. The best option is to drop down to being a part-time Kirkwood student and get a full-time job somewhere in Iowa. You are not allowed to go to school more than six credit hours while working said full-time job, meaning you need to put your education on hold to show colleges you are in Iowa to work.
When I start at Iowa, I will have lived in the state for almost two years, renting an apartment and possibly owning a house by that point. I will have owned a car in the state for the entire time, been a registered voter the entire time and worked in the state, albeit part-time, the whole two years. According to the University of Iowa, that simply is not good enough and I will get to pay triple what everybody else will, simply because they feel I moved to the state for educational purposes.
Although it will be a massive financial undertaking for me, the university will get exactly what they want-an absurd amount of money from somebody who just wants the chance to further his education.
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