Earlier this week the SGA discussed the 100 percent increase in the $75 fee every student must pay, pushing it up to $150. On Tuesday the Board of Regents approved the fee increase, as well as the extra two percent they are cutting from all university budgets.
Roughly, that’s an extra $41 million that has just disappeared from state institutions, all while in the last year enrollment increased at least five percent, or 30,000 students, state wide. Again this is another case of potentially diminishing the quality of your education while raising the costs.
These new fee increases, when put against the state’s budget cuts, won’t solve the financial situation. The state needs to reassess its priorities and direct more of its funding to maintaining and expanding its quality higher-education system.
Thankfully the USG banned all fee increases until fiscal year 2011, and said they would phase out the fee increase in 2012. Of course, they said in August of this year that they wouldn’t raise fees anymore and that they’d only cut six percent of the budget—believe them if you will, I’ll wait and see what they’re saying another three months from now.
Naturally, there is a big exception to this rule. No new fees or charges on students…except for “fees for public/private venture projects, such as residence halls, student-financed recreation centers and other facilities with a revenue stream or fees required under extraordinary circumstances and with significant student support.” So things like the 90 bucks we have to pony-up for a student center many of us will never see and that we might not really need? A-Ok.
Schools are still at liberty to charge whatever they want for effectively any reason, and the plethora of fees we all pay can never (as high as they may seem) be enough to pay down the massive projects AASU likes to undertake. We pay for a fraction; the school uses some state funds and a few private donations, and takes the lion’s share on as debt. Essentially, they use us (a revenue stream) to finance the rest of the project.
So the school and the USG are cutting themselves into mediocrity, because quality doesn’t come cheap. There will be fewer professors and the most qualified will go on to better jobs elsewhere. There will be more students, less space, fewer resources, a state government that doesn’t seem to care and a university that wants new dorms before it wants buildings whose roofs don’t leak and enough professors to maintain functioning departments.
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