How much do you pay to go to Fairfield University?
The answer for most students is close to $80,000 annually. To this price, add on the cost of textbooks from Red Stack Direct (which I wrote about in a previous article), and then add on a price that many students never think about: merchandise.
Do you know how much money you’ve spent on merchandise?
There’s the early rush when you were first accepted and wanted to wear college merch to your high school. For many people, there were dorm decorations to purchase. Then there’s the first days of your Freshman year when you might have needed some more clothing, or just wanted a warm sweatshirt or maybe a hat. Then there’s the holiday season and gifts for family and friends. Then there are four years of occasional purchases that build on each other, each as innocuous as the last.
Purchasing one sweatshirt or a single pair of pajamas isn’t so bad, even without any discounts. Making five, or ten or twenty purchases? That’s another matter altogether. Not to mention the merchandise your family might have purchased on their own. It adds up quickly.
Don’t believe me? Check the online store.
The cheapest sweatshirts are $45, except for one which is inexplicably $35, but also the ugliest of the bunch. The most expensive are $115, again, except for one which is $185. The store also sells $100 cufflinks which look like they should cost no more than $20. Additionally, they sell $300 branded wristwatches. More ridiculous is a $450 leather bag which looks like something you could buy for $150 in downtown Fairfield or Westport, except this one has a monogrammed F on it, so that makes it special.
The website is clearly massively overpriced. That isn’t really a question. The store in the Barone Campus Center (BCC) is just as bad. Take the $100 Fairfield wool sweaters that in a reasonable world would be something like $60. Or the ballpoint pens that are priced so high they might as well be made of gold.
There is a similarly frustrating part of the BCC to consider, however. They never seem to restock, and not all of their items are available online. I, for one, have spent the past few weeks trying to get a pair of pajamas. They have not restocked yet, and having asked the staff, it seems they don’t expect to restock soon, or at least aren’t entirely aware of their own restocking schedule.
None of this is good, and it doesn’t paint Fairfield University in a particularly great light.
There is, you might find, a general sentiment among the students that the University would gladly pick their pockets if they could get away with it. Here, as with textbooks, this seems to be the case. With rising class sizes, overpacked housing and an overpacked Tully, the least Fairfield University could do is offer a discount to students who already pay $80,000 just to attend school.
Mostly, I just want a pair of pajamas.
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