Duke University increases student fees to provide sex-change surgery to students

Duke University increases student fees to provide sex-change surgery to students

Duke UniversityThe jobs picture, which was bleak for 2012 college graduates, is looking even bleaker for this year’s graduating class. According to a survey by the consulting firm Accenture, 41% of recent grads who managed to find work hold down dead-end jobs that don’t require a degree.

So what are the nation’s leading universities doing to ensure its alumni have bright futures? Nothing really, though one of them, Duke, is making the present even more difficult for the vast majority of its matriculates in order to accommodate the needs of a few. Campus Reform reports that the prestigious school is raising its fees across the board to pay for student sex reassignment surgery:

The private university, located in North Carolina, follows Brown and other universities in offering coverage for the controversial operation.

Administrators say they will cover the cost of the reassignment surgery up to $50,000 that will be covered with a cause a 0.3 percent increase to overall student fees.

Three tenths of a percent isn’t that much for students who are already paying an estimated $58,865 to attend. The upcharge works out to a mere $177 per academic year. But then again, why should any of that cost be passed along to students who have no use or need for the service? Lambda Legal, a gay rights advocacy group, estimates that 5 to 6 percent of students nationwide are LGBT. Extrapolating that number to Duke, which has an undergraduate enrollment of 6,680, some 400 students are L, G, B, or T. The subset of those students who believe they were born into the wrong body is not publicly stated but is almost certainly smaller.

Duke, Campus Reform notes, is now one of 37 universities nationwide that cover sex-change operations. Emory University is the only other college in the Southeast, besides Duke, to offer sexual reassignment surgery to students.

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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