College Tuition Costs Make Attendance Challenging

Evan Fisher

Faisal Nucho, pictured left, is enjoying a gorgeous day at Rochester Park. He spends a lot of his free time there when he’s not buried in homework.

Faisal Nucho, 21, is currently in his third year at Macomb Community College. Nucho, along with his two siblings, are first-generation college students. Nucho wants to attend Oakland University, but there have been several roadblocks that have prevented him from attending so far.  

Attending a university is expensive. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of attendance for a private university is $25,707 per year for in-state students.

 There are things that can help with this—scholarships, financial aid, grants, and family contribution. What happens when your family can’t help take some of that financial load because they struggle to find work due to their ethnicity? 

Nucho’s father went to trade school in Saudi Arabia, but he has not been able to secure a high-level job in the US because “his skills wouldn’t be able to transfer over,” said Nucho. 

He would need to relearn the skills that he already had access to, if he wanted to be able to use them in a work setting. He would need to spend more money to go to school again, which is very expensive at higher levels.

According to Nucho, the lack of monetary contribution from his parents has lengthened the time it has taken to be able to move on from Macomb Community College. He explains that it is not because they don’t want to help him, but because they cannot. 

The valuable skills his parents have are now worth very little because of their immigrant status and the language barrier. Both of his parents have worked on breaking down over their time in the United States.

Nucho hopes to attend Oakland University soon and says that even if his parents were able to help him out more, he would still take advantage of going to a community college to take the prerequisite classes for a cheaper price than what Oakland University offers.

Nucho is thankful for the chance to attend college in any capacity. He sees it as a blessing, and he wants other people to as well. “I want people to recognize how much of a blessing having an education is,” Nucho said. Even though Nucho might not be as far ahead as he wants to be, he recognizes that he is still making steps towards his goal—that’s what’s important to him.