Just as the title may suggest - or blatantly says - I seriously considered marriage to a friend so that I would be able to afford to go to my current school.

Most people who have endured the living hell that is student loan debt, college research, and being a student know about the housing rules on their campuses. Colleges, knowing they can take a quick buck from each student, oftentimes require a student to live on-campus his or her first year. This usually leads to exorbitantly priced housing, where many students end up paying the equivalent of an average person's house mortgage each month just to live in a sub-par room.

My school, of course, decided to overachieve on this end. Instead of making on-campus living a requirement for first-years, it decided to go ahead and make it a requirement for three straight years.

So that apartment two minutes from campus that you could rent out (utilities included) for $300 a month? Forget about it. Get ready to pay anywhere from $2500-$6000 a semester (depending on where you choose to live) for your dorm, plus your required $750-$3000 meal plan (per semester, of course).

I added up the numbers. I looked at how much I earned. I scanned my scholarships. Housing and food at this school was going to end up costing me a hefty $11,000 versus the $4,500 I had calculated from living and eating off-campus.

Don't get me wrong. My school isn't that up its own ass when it comes to overcharging students. This fee could be escaped if your parents lived within a forty mile radius of the campus (mine didn't), you were 21 before the school year started (so basically a senior at that point), or you were married.

Do you see where this is going?

My friend, Samantha, had grown up in a moderately wealthy household as her parents were business owners. However, one thing led to another, and she ended up having to pay for her next year on campus on her own. She could no longer rely on her parents to help her pay for her housing. We were both going to be sophomores the next school year, and we knew that we couldn't pay the ridiculous price-tag for the housing equivalent of asbestos and mold (did I mention that for the most part, the dorms also sucked?).

So we did what any normal college students would do in this situation: we decided that it made sense for us to get married. We were both nineteen, and we figured that a two year marriage would warrant an annulment or a quick no-fault divorce once we hit the age of 21. We did the research. In our county, all you needed to get married if you were an adult was a valid ID and $10.

The thing is, as easy as it is to get married, marriage entails a whole hell of a lot legally. If one of us were to get in a coma and the doctors had to ask our families about whether or not we should be left on life-support, the decision would ultimately rely on the spouse. We would then have to file our taxes jointly. Her credit and financial situation could very easily affect my credit and my financial situation. It became a legal entanglement - though ending up with my life in the hands of my potential roommate seemed a lot better to me than letting the monetary interest of a school decide if I get to live.

And here's what I'm trying to get at:

I shouldn'thave to consider getting married and becoming a 21-year-old divorcée just to be able to pay for college. That's fucking insane. I already had a job, worked full-time through the summer, had a full-tuition scholarship, and I still had to take out loans.

I get it. Colleges are, in essence, businesses. My school knew just how inexpensive the housing in the area was, thus it made housing mandatory for three years. Ask any administrator and they will justify it by saying that on-campus living promotes greater degrees of involvement, but no college from the purity of its heart really cares if you're attending all of those knitting club meetings. In full disclosure, my school account that states how much I owe them even refers to me as a customer. The fact that I go to a private school makes this even worse.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no critic of capitalism or profit-making or the virtues of having a free-market economy with profitable businesses. I get why they're important and I understand their contribution to society. What I still don't understand for the life of me is this: when did we allow the education of our country's people become a business? For god's sake, Harvard has an endowment of $36 billion - making it richer than 104 countries. Keep in mind, this is a school that costs 60 grand each year to attend. If we're charging our country's brightest students an arm and a leg just to get a college education, what does that say about our priorities as a country?

I'm not advocating for free college. I'm not suggesting granting scholarships to the people whose only As on their transcript are the ones in their name. But I am saying that eventually, something needs to change.