New fees find no favor

One matter just about all college students agree upon is that higher costs of college are bad. Tuition already rises almost every semester, and books are more and more expensive each year. Students also generally dislike when they are asked to pay more money not knowing where that extra cash is going.

New fees charged to students in the College of Arts & Sciences this academic year have violated both of these cardinal rules. $450,000 will be collected from the new fees, which will be used to make up for budget shortcomings due to decreased funding from the state of Ohio.

The fees will not be directed toward the individual programs for which they are being assessed; rather, they will be pooled into the general fund, which is spent at the university's discretion. In this way, the fees serve more as a tuition increase than as lab fees. Unlike tuition hikes, the fees are applied to individual majors.

This follows a certain logic – students of certain majors consume more of the university's resources than those of other majors, and should therefore pay extra to counterbalance this. Also, some programs reward students with a degree with much higher earning potential than others.

Engineering majors, for example, can expect a much higher market value for their degree than a communications or anthropology major. It would be equitable to assess a proportionally larger fee upon students who will reap greater monetary gains from their education at UT.

Unfortunately, the new fees don't quite follow either of these logical avenues. As a number of students have already pointed out in complaint, the fees don't seem to accurately reflect the actual use of university resources by particular programs. As in the Pre-med or Pre-dental programs, students don't seem to consume any substantially greater amount of resources than the average student until their senior year.

The second possible justification, that fees would be assessed upon those who are working toward a higher-valued degree, is also not the case here — a $100 fee is now assessed on those enrolled in a Developmental Math course, which includes Elementary Algebra I, II and Intermediate Algebra, and neither uses copious university resources nor results in a high-paying career.

If the fees are not going to be channeled into the programs of the students paying them, how are students to feel any sense of security that they will benefit from the extra cost? With the nearly half-million dollars being poured into the general fund, there is nothing to stop the administration from directing the funds wherever they please. Nothing except the students, that is.

Standing above and beyond any other issue is the ugly silence on the issue from the administration. As with other recent administrative changes, the implementation of these fees has been poorly communicated.

Students are paying the salaries of those making these decisions. It is their right and responsibility to demand accountability and explanation in regards to all matters of how our money is to be spent. An open channel of communication should be kept at all times, especially in regards to budget issues and increasing students' costs.