Letter to Editor by Ann DeSanctis

I am graduating in December, and in preparation for that day I am applying to graduate programs as well as several outside scholarships.  All of these applications require official transcripts sent through the Office of the Registrar.  To my dismay, when I went to order a transcript I discovered that the price to do so is now $10.  That’s double what I paid when I arrived at UK— a 100 percent increase.  I thought a nine percent tuition hike was bad enough.

I want to know, where is this extra money going?  The lady who efficiently printed, enveloped, stamped, and delivered my transcript to me, without the two-day delay, made it clear that she was not on the receiving end of this price hike.  So who is?  Is the administration so hard up for money that they have to slip in little price hikes in places they think we won’t notice?

As I see it, the university should be glad that students are ordering transcripts.  Like my case, it often means that we are moving on to do bigger and better things or are continuing our education.  Shouldn’t the university support that?

What infuriates me even more is that of the three other schools from which I’ve ordered a transcript, not one of them has charged me a dime.  They have printed and mailed my transcripts for free on multiple occasions. With my frustration in mind, I looked around at a few of the other SEC schools:

Vanderbilt, Auburn, and LSU offer free transcripts, with LSU charging $1 for each additional transcript after the first two. Georgia charges $2, Ole Miss, Missisippi State and Arkansas have $5 fee, Tennessee $7.50, Alabama charges $7, and South Carolina $10.

Yep.  We lead the pack.  If only I could say that about everything else our school does.

Ann DeSanctis

geography senior