Spring is in the air and commencement is right around the corner. As a graduating senior, I was looking forward to it.

There was another little shock waiting for me when I went to file for graduation: a fee of $48 if filing on time (one year out) or an additional $10 fee if filing late.

According to my Student Center, my estimated yearly cost of attendance is a little over $22,000 with $7,002 of that for fees paid to the university.

Maybe the struggle of getting through classes warped my head. Maybe the freakout I had when I checked my Degree Progress Report to find that it showed I was not on track for graduation this spring did the same.

At the end of the trip called education there’s a mandatory exit fee? What has that $7,000 a year been paying for then?

Do we contract with some outside agency to perform degree checks? No. There shouldn’t be a need for another fee, no matter how small, for something students have already been paying for.

I suppose Chico State students can at least take comfort in one thing: Our fee is lower than both Sacramento State and Humboldt State’s.

Joseph Rogers can be reached at [email protected] or @JosephLRogers1 on Twitter.