Long Beach State students who are on track to graduate by the summer of 2023 were required to apply for graduation by Oct. 15, which consisted of entering the expected semester of graduation and paying a $100 application fee.
Students who missed the deadline to apply for graduation must pay an additional $10 late fee. CSULB students, such as environmental science and policy major Jessica Brogna, are unhappy with shelling out an additional fee in order to graduate and questioned where the money goes.
“We should not be charged for our accomplishments, not to mention having already paid so much for tuition,” Brogna said.
CSULB President Jane Close Conoley said the fee covered staffing for degree audits, the cost of degree audits, printing the diploma and sending it out to the students’ home addresses.
“Although people don’t like doing the fees, they actually don’t cover the cost of ceremony at all,” Conoley said, to which she added that the total estimated cost of holding a graduation was at around $1.3 million.
Because students graduate at different times, Conoley said, the process of degree audits is a yearlong workload. As for waiving the application fee, there is no process for reducing or waiving the payment, even if students do not attend the ceremony.
“I think there should be at least a waiver for students who qualify for the Pell Grant or are low income. It just seems they create more obstacles for students to overcome every year,” said Sienna Dahl, an environmental science and policy major with a minor in economics.
Around 10,000 students a year graduate from CSULB, a number which has outgrown the CSULB stadium and moved the university’s graduation ceremony to Angel Stadium, according to Conoley. The costs for Angel Stadium’s own security and staff to direct students comes from the university contribution.
Dahl said the required application fee for students to graduate created a “barrier to overcome to get to graduation.”
“It has taken me many years to get to the point of finally graduating,” Dahl said. “Having to pay for the ceremony and additional items makes the ceremony feel like a privilege.”