In my three-and-a-half years as a student at LSU, my personal cost of attendance has slowly risen semester-by-semester with the largest spike at the tail end of last semester.

I, like every other out-of-state student at LSU, knew at the very least that expenses would be higher for me than that of my local peers. I did not, however, expect the steady rise to be so swift and aggressive that I would eventually need to apply for upwards of $75,000 in student loans to cover these fees.

In the fall semester of 2012, in-state tuition — including all fees — was a mere $3,498 for a student taking 15 hours, according to the University’s Office of Budget and Planning. Don’t get me wrong; that’s not a number to scoff at. For some, that could be quite a bit of money, especially since that number has risen to $3,892 for the upcoming fall semester.

But the out-of-state cost of attendance is an entirely different story. Tuition and fees are exactly the same, down to the penny. The difference is the out-of-state fees, which for fall 2012 were $7,638 for a student taking 15 hours, and are expected to be almost $9,000 for this coming fall.

You read that correctly — just the out-of-state fees are more than double the amount a resident pays in total. Add the two together, and it spells a complete nightmare for non-residents who don’t have any sort of scholarship helping them along, like myself.

In case you haven’t put the numbers together in your head, that makes the total cost of attendance for a non-resident $12,851 for just the fall semester of 2013. Add that to the preliminary number of $12,843 for spring 2014, and the cost for the whole year comes to a whopping $25,694 — not including any intersessions, or personal living expenses like housing or groceries.

Those are the numbers that I might expect to see on a fee bill from a private school, not a public university like LSU. Sure, out-of-state fees are ludicrous in most states, but there’s one major catch: LSU is one of the only universities in a state bordering my home state of Texas that does not offer Texas students in-state tuition. In many regions around the nation, bordering states will offer in-state tuition to their neighbors, which vastly expand a student’s options.

Many of these states are in the South and are all a part of the Academic Common Market, which is a program run by the Southern Regional Education Board. On their website, sreb.org, there is a chart listing every university that participates in the program. Many major universities appear on this list, including the University of Arkansas and the University of Florida, but LSU is notably missing from the list.

I’ve wanted to attend this school my whole life, and foolishly ignored the debt that I would incur by insisting on being a Tiger. Despite the existence of a program on campus called Texas Tigers, there is still very little assistance for us.

And if LSU doesn’t catch on to how absurd their fees are, we might just disappear.

Connor Tarter is a 21-year-old communication studies senior from Dallas, Texas.