Small student fee hike planned for ’05

staff

Alakananada Mookerjee

With the fall of 2005 comes a small increase in student fees.

The Board of Regents is expected to announce a hike in tuition and student fees in its upcoming meeting to be held in March.

Refusing to speculate on what the exact increase in likely to be, Marysz Rames, vice president of student affairs, said, “I cannot at this point tell you precisely by how much the fees are going to increase, but Board officials are currently looking at an increase of 2.2 percent.”

Fees increase every year by usually 3.3 to 3.5 percent. But compared to the increases in the previous years, this year it is expected to be comparatively lower, she added.

Board officials use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a guideline in arriving at decisions regarding student fees. CPI is a measure of the price change in consumer goods and services, used as a factor in determining inflation.

Reacting to the development, Students’ Association President Amanda Mattingly said, “Well, it is a catch-22 situation. On the one hand, I hate to see students pay more fees. But on the other, I am really impressed to see that the increase has only been minimal. And that’s so much lower than the fee increases in schools in the neighboring states like Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota, where the increase is in the double-digits.”

Besides inflation, Mattingly also cited enrollment as one reason for the increase.

However, some students feel less than pleased. Tory Haggerty, a sophomore pursuing his undergraduate studies in media production, said, “I am with the National Guard and they pay fifty percent of my tuition fees. I pay the rest. SDSU is one of the cheaper schools, but I feel that the fee structure is already too high. I was under the impression that colleges were non-profit organizations. I do not think this fee increase was necessary. What I would really like to know is, where all this money is going?”