I’m a senior at SUNY Cortland majoring in Sociology with a minor in Anthropology. Once I graduate, I plan on getting a job working at a children’s home in case management.

I pay for school with private loans. Because my parents don’t qualify, I don’t receive TAP or the Pell Grant. I have no option but to take out loans. I have to work back home and on the weekends when I’m at school to help pay for college and other expenses that I have.

When it comes to textbooks, my parents help pay for them, but I pay out of pocket for groceries because I don’t have a meal plan. I decided to take out another loan so that I could afford a meal plan, but that hasn’t gone through yet.

Since my dad makes too much, I don’t qualify for financial aid, but my parents still can’t afford to send me to school so my only option was to take out multiple loans and have my dad co-sign them. My parents have already put my two siblings through school, and we all have had to take out loans because it’s just not possible for my parents to pay for us all to go.

My biggest concern is that when I leave school I won’t get a job that will allow me to pay off my loans, which I have to start making payments on six months after graduating. If SUNY was fully funded, I wouldn’t have to worry about paying all these loans back, and it would also open doors for those who can’t afford to attend school.

I am a senior at SUNY Cortland studying Sociology with a concentration in Criminology. My plan after graduation is to go into social work, and I’m currently looking at a possible job in Maine that doesn’t require a master’s degree. I can’t afford graduate school, and my loans are already collecting interest so I have no option but to only look at jobs that don’t require another degree.

I currently pay for school with subsidized and Stafford loans and a small amount of financial aid. I don’t receive TAP, and I only receive a small amount of aid from the Pell Grant. In order to pay for school, I have to work. I work at the child care center at the YWCA before and after school.

I sometimes use the money I make from my job to pay for textbooks, and my parents help out when they can, but oftentimes if I can’t afford a textbook, I just don’t get it. I have had textbooks that cost more than $100, and I just can’t afford that. I have no option except to not buy the book.

I don’t have a meal plan, so I pay for groceries out of pocket, and sometimes my parents help pay for food. If I didn’t receive financial aid, going to school wouldn’t be an option for me, or I would have no choice but to co-sign another loan.

A fully funded SUNY system would allow those students who can’t afford school to have the ability to attend, and it would help current students stay in school without fear of paying loans back. Some students have no choice but to leave college because, financially, they just can’t do it. How can anyone start a life after graduating when they’re so deep in debt?

Not only is paying for school a challenge I face, but paying for parking is another financial obligation that I have. I would say that I have paid close to $300 in parking tickets since I have been here, and the cost of a parking pass is huge.

The biggest challenge that I’ve faced as a SUNY student is having my classes blocked when I can’t pay my bill. I wasn’t able to register for classes that I needed because I couldn’t make my payment. This could prevent students from graduating on time because certain classes are only offered at specific times, and if students can’t make their payments then they won’t be able to register when the class is offered. This forces students to pay more and stay for another semester.

I’m a senior at SUNY Cortland majoring in philosophy. After I graduate, I plan on working for a nonprofit organization. I pay for school with both financial aid and loans.

I receive TAP and the Pell Grant, and I also have a part-time job during the semester.

When it comes to textbooks, I usually don’t buy them because I can’t afford them. I try to find an online PDF version of the textbook, but if I can’t find that, then I have no option but to not have the book for class. For food, my financial aid covers the cost. I use it to buy groceries.

I depend on my financial aid, and this year I didn’t receive as much as previous semesters. My financial aid went from $4,000 to $400 because my sister moved out so my parents were expected to have that extra money to pay for my tuition. My mom had no choice but to take out a loan to help cover the costs of school.

We need a fully funded SUNY system so that all students have the opportunity to attend college, and they won’t be worried about paying for it. My biggest challenge as a SUNY student has been paying for school and worrying about how my parents are going to help me pay for it. A student’s main focus should not be paying for school; they should be focused on pursuing their education.

I’m currently a senior studying international studies and political science at SUNY Cortland. After graduation, I plan to work abroad, specifically in the Australian government.

In order to pay for school, I use financial aid as well as out of pocket payments. I receive both TAP and the Pell Grant to help cover the costs of school, but I also work part-time on campus for 20 hours a week on top of taking 19 credits. I use the money I make working to help pay for groceries, but I also use the student food cupboard on campus.

I pay for textbooks out of pocket with money from working. They’re expensive every semester, and I’m concerned that I won’t graduate on time and will have to pay for even more books all over again. There are classes that I’m required to take that are only offered at specific times, and I still haven’t been able to take them.

College should be accessible to everyone, and by making SUNY fully funded, it will be. Not everyone has the opportunity to attend college and financial aid doesn’t always cover everything, so students are left responsible to pay for the remaining costs. As students, our concern shouldn’t be having enough to eat. We should be focused on our education.

The biggest challenge that I’ve faced as a SUNY student is trying to afford both housing and food. My financial aid doesn’t cover housing because it is all spent on paying for my tuition, so I have to find ways to pay for it myself.

I’m a senior at SUNY Cortland studying Teaching English as a Second Language. After graduation, I plan on getting a teaching job and to begin working towards paying off my extensive student debt.

I pay for school in a few ways. I take out student loans and work a few part-time jobs, such as driving for Uber, cleaning houses, and interpreting for various places in the Syracuse area. As for TAP, I’m not eligible because I was working full-time, and I made too much money two years ago to qualify. I only receive about $200 from the Pell Grant, and I work as much as possible so that I am able to pay for college. As for textbooks, I use financial aid to pay for them. I don’t receive SNAP, so my husband and I pay out of pocket for groceries.

If I didn’t receive financial aid, I would not be able to go to school because it is so expensive. I have had no choice but to take out student loans, so I’m hoping to get a job after graduation that will help to pay off my student loans. I have no worries about graduating on time, but I am a non-traditional student.

SUNY should be fully funded and affordable so that students have the ability to attend college and ultimately have more opportunities and a better quality of life where they’re not forced to work low-paying jobs. 

I’m a freshman at SUNY Cortland studying English and philosophy with minors in women, gender, and sexuality studies, and in economics. At this point, I don’t have a definite plan for after graduation.

I pay for school with scholarships, financial aid, and loans. I receive TAP and the Pell Grant, and I also work through the work-study program as a part of my financial aid. I use my aid to pay for some of my tuition and textbooks, and I have a meal plan. Like many other students, if I didn’t receive financial aid I would not be able to attend college.

My biggest challenge as a student has been thinking about the future. The Excelsior scholarship was not clear about how they deduct Pell and TAP grants, so my parents had to take out an extra loan right before the tuition bill was due so I could afford to go here. I’m going to have all this debt to pay off when I leave college, and that’s stressful to think about.

We need fully funded colleges because in this economy you can’t rise up without a college education, and preventing someone from receiving such an education is depriving them of equal opportunity and a chance at the life they want and deserve. I think college should be free for everyone, everywhere. Education should be a right, not a privilege. 

This is my second year of college, but my first year at SUNY Cortland. I transferred here from Hudson Valley Community College. I’m a Political Science major with a minor in Communications, and I’m somewhere between a sophomore and a junior because of the credits I transferred in with from HVCC and high school.

I am concerned about graduating on time. If I had six more credits I’d be considered a junior right now. I didn’t want to do classes over the summer because I didn’t want to have to pay for that out of pocket on top of everything else. Once I do graduate from Cortland I’m going to grad school, preferably at U Albany or Syracuse. I pay for school with financial aid, TAP, and the Pell Grant. I also work at Target and Market 32 on breaks to pay for textbooks and food for the semester. If I didn’t get financial aid, I would probably be working full time at Target, and I don’t think it’d be possible to go to school at the same time as that.

I am a currently a freshman, undeclared major as for now, but studying to be a language interpreter. I receive financial aid from TAP and the Pell Grant and I am currently an EOP student. I also am currently receiving a grant from the New York Yankees because of my mother.

My biggest challenge is trying to stay calm and not to feel overwhelmed by the workload. I receive a lot of support. EOP supplies me with two textbooks and my family sends money to pay for the rest of my books. I have a meal plan paid through financial aid and also my mother helps me pay for food. I also do receive SNAP benefits as well. Also, I have a goal to complete work at a gradual pace so I won’t be overwhelmed by a last minute urgency.

We need SUNY fully funded because students who take the initiative to go into higher education deserve to be supported for their desire for higher success. Please continue to fund our schools and to fund me.

I’m a sophomore at SUNY Cortland. I study psychology, and I’m working toward a minor in Spanish. After I graduate, I’m going to grad school for my Master’s and PHD in psychology, probably somewhere in New York City– by home. I currently get financial aid, TAP, and the Pell Grant, but even with that I still take out loans, and my parents pay a little bit to help too.

I don’t work during the school year, but at home I work at the YMCA, and between the money I get from that and babysitting, I can pay for my textbooks. If I didn’t get financial aid I’d probably be in a CUNY school instead of at SUNY Cortland, so that I was closer to home and it’d be less expensive. I wanted to go to SUNY because I wanted to get out of the city for awhile. There are so many problems that SUNY and CUNY students have to face right now, but just one of them is transportation to and from school and home. That’s expensive, and I feel like that should be provided. We need a fully funded SUNY and CUNY so that everybody has the opportunity to get a degree no matter what financial circumstances they’re in.

I’m a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) major at SUNY Cortland, but before that I was an Adolescent Education major. I’m kind of a “super duper senior” because I graduated more than 2 years ago with a B.A. in English, which makes me a non-traditional student.

I have two plans that I could go for after graduating. I could get my master’s here at Cortland and then go to New York City to teach, or the second plan is basically going abroad and teaching. I pay for college with loans and work. I used to receive TAP and the Pell Grant when I was initially going to college, but I don’t receive them anymore.

I work part-time at Walmart, roughly 20 hours a week. Last year I worked full-time and could barely balance my workload between classes and work. This year it’s a lot easier to balance the workload. I get my textbooks through the inter-library loan, which is awesome because you don’t have to pay a million dollars for books. I use whatever money I have leftover from work for food, even though right now I don’t have a lot of money for that, either. I was going to apply for SNAP, but I heard that college kids aren’t always eligible.

Even if I didn’t receive financial aid for college I would still go, considering that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years, but I am concerned about graduating on time. Some of the classes I need to take actually conflict with other classes I need, which means I have to push my graduation date out a year, essentially. I think SUNY/CUNY should be free because I think that students shouldn’t have to worry about scraping together money for college when they should be trying to perform better in classes.