New insurance policies for international students broadens student options
While requiring international students at CMU to have health insurance is only logical, the recent changes to the university’s health insurance policy allows more freedom.
International students have been provided with more options from more health insurance providers and the option to pay for insurance by the semester, instead of being required to pay for an entire year, including the summer.
By the nature of their situations, many international students are not at the university, or even in the country, for an entire school year. To force them to be insured for periods of time during, which they are not in the areas where their coverage applies, simply does not make sense.
This makes attending school at CMU and returning to their homes less restrictive to the 600 or so students it affects, which will encourage these and more potential students to whom finances are a major concern to attend this university.
This comes after both protests by groups of international students, and pleas made by the Student Government Association to change the international student health insurance policy.
Commendations must also be made to SGA, whose involvement is lauded. In the past several years, SGA has been more visibly involved in championing a number of causes on campus, including this and getting more money for the university’s Campus Programming Fund last year.
By taking up such causes and seeing results from their efforts, the SGA appears to be a more effective group on campus, which will in turn give them more leverage to get more change to occur on campus.
The primary benefactors of the new policies, however, are the international students it affects.
A primary issue with higher education in Michigan and at large has been how cost-prohibitive it can be, through tuition and other charges. This is a step toward making education less prohibitive to a group of students who already pay more than most to attend this university.
