Now that most Americans are paying attention to the high cost of going to college, quite a few schools have announced that they are freezing their tuitions. At the same time, however, they sneak in extra charges for various services (whether students use them or not), calling them “fees.”
In today’s Martin Center article, Chris Corrigan looks at this bit of trickery.
He writes, “Generally speaking, tuition is supposed to cover the costs for the academic or educational part of college attendance: professors’ salaries and classroom buildings. Fees are meant to cover extra services and amenities like intercollegiate sports, recreation centers, and technology. Fees have become an important part of funding at public institutions, with 90 percent of public universities now charging some kind of fee. In some cases, fees now exceed tuition.”
In the UNC system, Corrigan notes, tuition has been level, but fees have risen 16.9 percent since 2015.
One tactic that administrators use is to get student committees to recommend approval of their fee increases, often for dubious things like “student success” that are merely a backdoor way of getting more money for faculty salaries.
Corrigan wisely suggests that students and parents need to look not just at tuition but also at fees when they do their cost-comparison shopping.