I’m holding off on graduating till fall 2008. Not because I love Sacramento State, not because I want to go for a double major but because I can’t afford to go to summer school.

I’m a poor college kid. There, I said it. Nothing would make me happier than to get out of Sac State as soon as possible but my current financial situation doesn’t allow me to do that.

I had it all mapped out. I would take six units in summer school, take a full loan in fall 2007 and graduate in spring 2008. That is, until I looked at the cost of tuition for summer school.

According to CSUS.edu, tuition for the six units in the summer is $946. For seven plus units, it’s going to run you $1,474. I figured everything would be kosher. I would just hit up that good, old installment plan. Wrong!

Much to my dismay, the installment plan isn’t offered in the summer. This is when I came to the realization the summer school is too expensive. I mean, tuition here is expensive in general but I always had the installment plan to fall back on. Asking for that kind of money up front is just ludicrous.

There is always summer school at one of the local community colleges, the problem with that is that they don’t offer the upper division courses I need in order to graduate.

Senior Roshaun Davis journalism major, is going to Sacramento City College for summer school classes.

“I don’t understand why they would charge so much for the same classes you could take at a community college,” Davis said.

I was not fully aware that a good majority of Sac State students go to community college in the summer and decide to opt out for the high costs of our summer school tuition.

According to losrios.edu, enrollment fees are $20 a unit. That means you can take a 12-unit load for $240. That’s probably less than you would pay for books at Sac State.

What to do, what to do? There aren’t many options if you’re trying to graduate on time and you still have to take upper division classes.

Either pay I $946 up front that could have been used for go my other bills. I mean who really needs lights and food, right? Or I can opt to hold off graduating until another semester. Sigh.

I’m not going to turn into one of the typical college student and complain that tuition is too high. Yes, it’s high we know, we get it. Offer the damn installment plan during the summer. It’s obvious we are not balling out of control. At least I’m not. Help us out, throw us a bone here.

On the bright side, I get to enjoy my summer to the fullest. I can relax and travel and really do what I want. I wasn’t really looking forward to trying to jam a semester’s worth of school work into a few weeks, now I can relax. I suppose there are positive attributes and drawbacks to my situation.