Four years isn’t nearly enough to learn everything our university has to teach us.

Unfortunately, proposed Washington State Senate Bill 6358 seeks to dissuade students from digging further into the wealth of knowledge the UW has to offer.

Bill 6358, proposed by Sen. Derek Kilmer, would put a surcharge on students who accumulate 125 percent of the credits they need to graduate or who retake classes they have already passed.

The surcharge? The “full cost of instruction for the subsequent quarter.”

You read that right. That’s thousands of dollars in surcharges. For out-of-state students, it’s particularly brutal.

If you’re a “professional student,” this can be an issue. Yes, they take away slots that could be taken by freshmen, but this solution is like trying to squish an ant with a sledgehammer. It does a lot more damage to students legitimately working toward a degree than it will ever do to the minority who can afford to linger at college in this economy.

This bill hurts the seniors who want to stay in for three extra quarters to broaden their academic horizons as much as the “professional student” who has already been in school for seven years.

Students already pay a lot for tuition, and it’s continuing to rise. Paying that high premium is already enough proof that they think they need to continue to take classes. Why should students have to pay extra on top of that?

It can take time to find a field you enjoy working in.

Would we rather rush students through college, forcing them to choose a major without being able to adequately test the waters, or let them have the time to find a path and do something they enjoy?

The latter option may take a little extra time, but it will produce a better, more passionate generation of students.

Even worse than taxing students for staying in school a couple of extra quarters is taxing students because they want to retake a class.

Retaking classes isn’t a matter of GPA, it’s a matter of education.

If you managed to pass a hard math or science class but didn’t feel like you grappled with the material as well as you could have, you should be able to retake it. It’s not going to get any easier in the next level.

Students should be able to make sure they can refine the knowledge they have before going in over their heads and taking the next class in the series.

Retaking classes isn’t just limited to technical classes with hard-to-grasp material.

In many artistic and creative fields, like the UW’s creative writing program, students will often take the same class with a different teacher. Students come out of their second iteration of the class with an entirely new range of experiences, akin to having taken an entirely different class.

If this bill is passed, those kinds of opportunities will disappear. Nobody will want to pay such exorbitant fees.

Bill 6358 is discouraging for the future of education. Is this what college has come to, a degree manufacturing line that pushes students in and out as soon as possible? It’s supposed to be about the experience. It’s supposed to be about learning. It’s supposed to be about preparing ourselves for the future. This bill limits all three.

Maybe this bill won’t be passed. But for now, take advantage of the opportunities while you still can.

Reach columnist Gavin Verhey at opinion@dailyuw.com.