Michigan State University pays for my health insurance.

My stepfather is currently faculty at the green and gargantuan school in Lansing. Actually, for most of my life, my parents have been employed by Division I universities. I’m indebted to universities, not only for my own bachelor’s degree, but also for twenty-two years’ worth of dentist visits and medical check-ups.

From a young age, I learned that universities are not just academic meccas, places for creative hearts and hungry minds to flourish. A university is also a business. It’s where Dad has an office and gets a paycheck and retirement benefits.

Only last month, President Biden unveiled his plan to forgive student loans, a move that spotlighted higher education—and its jarring cost. Many people right now are asking why higher education is outrageously expensive. Is something inherently wrong with the system?

I’d start with a counter-question: how do you think the nearly twelve thousand professors and staff at MSU get healthcare coverage?

On top of that, MSU contains over fifty thousand students. That’s basically an independent society. And running a society is not cheap. The campus has to support parking meters, sidewalks, dormitories, snow plows, security systems, convenience stores, gyms, dining halls, bookstores, mental and medical health facilities, in addition to academic halls (and their upkeep). The campus builds stadiums, brings in speakers and politicians and performers, and stages exciting events for freshman and alumni alike. The campus hires professors, in addition to janitors, accountants, coaches, counselors, human resource professionals, marketers, admissions counselors, cooks, and IT support staff, to name only a sampling.

I’m not saying that budding scholars should channel a different kind of spartan and start living in musty dormitories and subsisting on bread and potatoes. I’m not saying that life at college shouldn’t be enjoyable. But before we can address the cost of higher education, we have to come to terms with the fact that we aren’t just paying for lectures and homework assignments.

And address it we should. It’s a shame that college is inaccessible to some because of financial situations, because when done right, we get so much more out of our tuition than a phone-number-sized bill and a great time on the Calvin rock wall.

We gain experiences, like writing for the campus newspaper, joining a band, working with Plaster Creek Stewards, serving as an RA, and running a student org, which are all priceless opportunities to practice leadership and test-drive—dare I say it—our vocations.

We enjoy resources. Where else can we tinker with chemicals in a laboratory or conduct research on native flora? Where else can we amble through aisles of Shakespeare and Socrates and Aquinas and Kierkegaard? Where else do we find planetariums and art museums and botanical gardens? Where else do we preserve theaters and band halls? These things are, I’d argue, essential to the purpose of higher education. (Is my liberal-arts bias showing?)

And we forge connections. We meet people who boost our careers and join our LinkedIn networks, and we meet people with whom we have electrifying conversations in the cafeteria. We meet people from all sorts of diverse cultures and backgrounds. We learn to live in community with each other, and we make friendships that hopefully last longer than our student debts before Biden forgave them.

It’s nearly impossible to put a price tag on higher education, because we’re investing in opportunities and exploration as well as information, in hopes of churning out wiser and more productive citizens of the world.

But I do hope that one day the price tag gets a tad smaller.

Hannah Riffell

Hannah Riffell has landed in Lansing, Michigan twenty-three years after she was born there, nineteen years after she moved to Mississippi, seven years after she moved to Northern Michigan, and two years after she graduated from a university in Grand Rapids. You probably can’t find her because she’s either exploring the state, wandering around her city, or just lost in her own head.