Welcome to Pagosa Springs University! We’re happy to have you join us — no matter if you’ve signed up for a full academic degree program, one of our non-credit professional certificate programs, or you’re merely auditing one of our popular courses like Dog-Walking 101. Your future with us is bright!
As you will quickly discover, PSU serves a non-traditional student body. The majority of our students are the over the age of 50… quite a bit older than what’s typical for most American universities.
You’ll also find we’re one of the least ‘diverse’ campuses you will come across, although we do admit a fair number of students from Texas, with the goal of keeping the debates in our political science courses interesting. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion may be ‘well and good’ on campuses like UC Berkeley and Columbia, but we’ve certainly seen the mess that sort of thing creates.
Which brings us to an important university policy that we want all new students to understand, and appreciate.
According to a recent vote by our Board of Regents, PSU allows non-violent campus protests, but only around certain issues and only at certain times of the year. Preferably Christmas Break.
In December 2023, for example, a group of students met at the university library to protest the price of gasoline. Not only was this protest endorsed by the Board of Regents; one of the regents actually participated in the protest.
Although non-violent protests are allowed, our students need to understand that such protests are not always effective. (eg. The just-mentioned gasoline protest.). And although methods exist for increasing the likelihood of success — for instance, the gas price protesters could have set fire to a couple of our local gas stations and generated considerably more media interest — protests that entail the destruction of property are generally discouraged… unless, say, you are planning to build a three-story condominium on a parcel that currently accommodates a single mobile home placed in 1974.
As an example.
Organizing a protest around the displacement of family living in a older mobile home would be counter-productive, to say the least. Modernization of the campus is an ongoing priority as PSU.
The Board of Regents also discourages protests aimed at defeating proposed tax increases. (Although we prefer to call them ‘tuition enhancements’ rather than ‘tax increases’.) Some such protests in the past — such as the protest against the funding for the new campus jail — have unfortunately been successful, and resulted in a reallocation of tuition payments that left our campus streets and roads in below-average condition.
‘Successful protest’ is not all it’s cracked up to be.
(We are here utilizing the term “roads in below-average condition” euphemistically, as defined in the PSU Student Handbook.)
You will find the cost of tuition to be reasonable, compared to other Colorado universities. Our student housing is quite a different matter.
However, we have a variety of ‘work-study’ programs. Most of the positions available are service industry jobs that do not require a college degree. Which is a good thing, since you are obviously enrolling in order to get your degree!
As numerous studies have indicated, having a college degree will make it easier to dig yourself out from under the massive student debt you will acquire while studying at PSU. Statistically speaking.
Don’t listen to the people who question the value of massive student debt. As you will learn here at PSU, debt is the very things that’s made America great… Or, at least, America used to be great… and it will be great again, God willing. But hopefully, non-violently.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.