Tuition increases, other fees could keep some students away from higher education
By Joseph Sergio
Tuition prices aren’t the only thing going up on student’s bills for next year, the prices of some fees are also on the rise.
According to Texas Tech University’s fiscal year layout for last year and the current year, three of the 13 fees increased in price. The Student Services fee and the Student Business Services fee both increased by $1 per student and the Recreational fee increased by $5 per student.
As for this year, articles from the Daily Toreador and the Lubbock Avalanche Journal report that there are three more fees that students could be paying a different price for. The Student Recreational fee is going to increase $5 per student, as the building of the new leisure pool gets underway. The Energy fee is also going to increase, but the Avalanche Journal did not report an exact dollar amount of the increase, but said that it will not increase to more than $90 from the current $60 per student. The Journal did have some good news to report by saying the Library fee could drop from $16 to $14 per students.
Jerry Stevens, a business professor at Tech, said that things have changed a lot since he went to college in the 1960s. He said the government doesn’t pay nearly as much as they used to for students to go to college. Stevens said when he was in college he paid roughly $4,000 for his entire four years at Texas A&M University but now a single semester costs more than that.
“It is crazy how much students have to spend on their education these days,” Stevens said. “Students are now coming out of school with an unreal amount of debt, sometimes as much $100,000.”
Stevens said he did not see the prices of a college education decreasing in the future. He said that universities are trying to be friendlier to the environment, which costs more, and they can’t rely on the government for the money anymore so the students have to take the full force of paying.
Stevens also said that even though prices are high, he still recommends that everyone go to college if they are thinking about it, and even if they graduate with a lot of debt, they will have a high paying job and will be able to pay off their debt in not too much time.
One fee that students wont have to worry about increasing for the 2008-2009 year is the housing fee.
Sean Duggan, the Managing Director for University Student Housing, said this would be the first year in a long time that the housing fee isn’t going to increase. Duggan said last year the fee went up 2% from the year before, but that was pretty small to some of the previous years.
Duggan also said that in the 17 years that he’s worked there, he has seen the fee increase as little as 2% to as much as 13%, so the fact that they don’t have to increase the fees at all for the upcoming year is a big deal.
“We were pretty lucky actually. We were able to move some stuff around in the budget and make it to where there was not increase,” Duggan said. “We realize that we are working for the students, and if they are happy then we are definitely happy.”
Duggan said that the housing department is trying to improve the dorms in any way possible. One of those ways is changing the light fixtures and light bulbs to be more energy efficient, which will cut down on energy costs.
Duggan said he wants to make living in the dorms as positive experience as possible. He said he realizes that other fees are going up, but if he can get students to Tech because of their housing then he knows they will be able to endure the rising fees and stay at Tech for the college careers.