Don’t be fooled by the news that students will pay less in fees next year. This doesn’t change the fact that the University looked to increase student fees at every turn this year. Had things gone according to plan, students would be paying about $100 more next year. Rather than celebrating, students must look past this year’s fluke and press on against incremental increases that quickly add up.
This year’s student representatives have effectively cut back unnecessary increases in athletics and transportation costs, but they need to stay vigilant. If students do not get a handle on gradual but consistent fee increases, they could end up continually paying more for less. Fees are the only area of college finance that students have direct control over, so more should be done to control costs.
Student fees amounted to $1,880.64 this year. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 27 percent of what in-state students pay in tuition and fees per year. This total is up $188.90 from 2008-09 and has increased at double the rate of inflation during that span.
While these fees pay for critical services like Campus Health Services, libraries and transportation, increases are not always justified and are rarely spread equally. Like a frog placed in cold water that is slowly heated, students are being tricked year after year into approving small annual increases that are slowly burning a hole in their pockets. If this cycle is not broken, students may soon find themselves in hot financial waters.
Because the process is more negotiation than science, some organizations have turned to savvy techniques that so far have yielded dramatic increases in funding. The most common of these involves a series of small annual increases. One fee where this is demonstrated is the $346.35 student activity fee, which supports programs like APPLES, safety and on-campus involvement.
Since 2008, the fee has increased $42.86, but none of that funding has gone to support student organizations. The majority, or $31.37, has gone to cover increased spending at the Student Union and Campus Recreation. This increase amounts to more than $850,000 in new funding.
As a result, students now pay $241.57 for the same services while the amount available to the more than 600 on-campus groups has remained the same, at $39. Though these annual increases may seem like small change, it quickly builds into a significant fee after it’s repeated annually.
While regular increases are bad, even more scary are permanent debt service fees that threaten to blindly charge students.
These fees, used to fund construction and renovation projects, are supposed to expire on a certain date, but administrators have hinted that these fees could be extended permanently. This year’s fee reduction was only possible because of the expiration of such a fee. Ideas like this one shed light on the mindset administrators have toward student fees and reaffirm the need for oversight.
