Academically, I feel everything I labor to learn leaves my memory days, if not hours, after I learn it. Knowing this, I still go through the motions. I study. I read. All the while I am wincing in pain from boredom and cringing at the uselessness of the facts I’m forced to know, like what “wampum” is, the Valsalva Maneuver and anything math related (nothing personal, Patrick McEwen). But now more than ever, I think to myself, “Why bother?” Today, an undergraduate degree isn’t enough to promise anything, except considering living in your parent’s basement. Recently, a friend of mine with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois was denied a second interview at Family Video. I better start robbing banks or become a gold digger and cruise the 4 o’clock dinner rush at Perkins for old widows, because my skills are about as marketable as nude photos of Rosie O’Donnell. The good news is kidneys are going for an all-time high in New Guinea. But how would you get there?

All my problems with this “learning” crap aside, UW-Madison still has some considerable flaws. The most widespread of those is the cost. I’m from Illinois, (Yeah, Illinois. I speed on Wisconsin highways, am a Bears fan, prefer hot dogs to brats, call it a drinking fountain, not a bubbler, want several vacation homes in Wisconsin, love Door County and plan to marry one of your Wisconsin women. These are the values on which everyone from Illinois is raised.) so I pay the ridiculously disproportionate out-of-state tuition. That’s bad enough, yet I still get nickel-and-dimed with things like $2.50 charges when I put money on my Campus Cash account and a $20 online ordering fee when I order basketball tickets. The constant spending of money incites consideration of what a person could do with four to five years of work experience and income along with $80,000-$120,000 (approximate cost of attending an out-of-state university for four to five years) and compare that to a fresh college graduate $80,000 to $120,000 in debt with little to no job experience.

Then there is the indirect cost we pay. Like so many others, I came to Madison hoping to get into the business school. I didn’t. Not only did I waste two years accumulating credits toward a major I wouldn’t get into, but now I have to pay for a fifth year of schooling. For many, this is a too familiar story. And it extends beyond the business school. Due to a shortage of space and faculty, the School of Nursing and the School of Education reject nearly half of their applicants. I ask you: In what other exchange of money for goods or services can somebody hand over thousands of dollars and not get what they want in return? The university takes your tuition money and then dictates what you can get with it. It’s like paying for a house and getting a condo, or, like in a classic Eddie Murphy scenario, paying for what you thought was a female prostitute only to find out it’s a man. It’s a rip.

Joining in the effort to slow your progress towards graduation are “bottleneck courses.” These are classes that are required for many majors and, subsequently, quickly become filled, leaving many students to wait another semester or year to finish their requirements for graduation. This inability to access the university’s resources has cost many students, including myself, hard-earned money and time we could be spending doing anything other than learning.

So, as you could have guessed, when I first heard of the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates, I was skeptical. I scrutinized the details expecting to find vague projections for the future and meager justifications for increasing the total of in-state and out-of-state tuition by $1,000 and $3,000, respectively, over the next four years. Instead, I found a cohesive plan aimed at solving every qualm I have ever had with this university, all while maintaining a tuition cost for both residents and non-residents that would be one of the lowest in the Big Ten. Money raised from the Initiative will be used to retain and hire faculty members that, in turn, will allow for bottleneck courses, the School of Business, the School of Nursing, and the School of Education to admit and allow more students to graduate in a timely fashion. Also, along with money raised by the UW Foundation, the Initiative will aim to provide more financial aid to students. If your parents make less than $80,000 a year, you can apply for a grant that would cover the cost of the tuition increase. In collaboration, the components of the initiative are aimed at maintaining the UW’s reputation as a quality university, ostensibly preserving the worth of a degree from this institution. Knowing that my UW degree will continue to hold value enables me to stomach all the learning. My only problem with the initiative that I can see is that it didn’t happen sooner.

In my final year of education, the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates has, to my astonishment, injected my opinion of school with some optimism. And not a moment too soon. It’s far from making up for 19 years of cafeteria food, locker rooms and impotence-inducing health class slides, but it’s a start. Don’t get me wrong (mom and dad), I don’t want to sound completely ungrateful. The truth is school taught me a great many things in my preparation for a career. School has taught me how to cheat, fail gracefully, feed myself on a tight or non-existent budget, create the illusion I am working, effectively pretend I know what I’m talking about and, most importantly, tolerate doing something I hate, every day.

David Carter ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in forestry.