How much does it really cost to miss a class at Penn?
Hint: It’s a lot of Allegro’s…
Maybe you were too “inspired” by the sparkling champagne at a downtown or maybe you just stayed up too late writing your midterm paper.
Maybe you missed your alarm or maybe it’s just too goddamn cold.
I’m not one to judge (hey, who really wants to walk to DRL on Friday morning, or ever…), but I find some value in knowing how much playing a little hooky costs us.
For the academic year 2016-2017, the undergraduate cost of attendance is $69,340 (a huge increase of 3.9% from the last academic year). That’s $51,464 for tuition and fees, $9,450 for housing, $5,086 for dining, $1,280 for books, and $2,060 for personal expenses.
So back to the $51,464… let’s break it down. Let’s say the average Penn student takes 10 credits per year, which brings our total to $5,146.60 per class.
This semester, we have just over 14 weeks of school (excluding reading period and finals). If each class is 3 hours/week, that brings us to 42 hours of a course all semester, making each hour of class $122.54.
Sleeping through lecture costs $122.54. That’s an expensive nap. And if it’s difficult to understand, let me put that into Penn terms…
That’s 54 cheese slices from Allegro’s (we all know how much we need those)…
That’s 0.14 of our favorite Canada Goose parkas…
That’s about 31 banana whips from Hip City Veg…
And 245 pints on Wednesday night at Smokes…
If you’re on the Best Food Fit meal plan, that’s about eight swipes to Commons (We can’t tell if we’d wake up for class instead…)