UM System President Gary Forsee. (Photo by Ahmad Aljuryyed for The Current)
Student fees proposed by three University of Missouri-St. Louis colleges may be heading on to the UM System board of curators next month for approval.
The proposed fees, which were designed to help pay for equipment and other services in the Colleges of Nursing, Fine Arts and Communications and Arts and Sciences, were put on hold earlier this semester following confusion over their relation to the proposed tuition freeze agreement between the state and all publically funded universities in Missouri.
The tuition freeze guarantees 95 percent of funding to universities for fiscal year 2011 as long as undergraduate tuition and fees remain flat. Until recently, UM-St. Louis administrators were under the impression that the agreement to hold tuition flat would also apply to student fees proposed by individual colleges. As a result, the fees were stopped after they were approved by the SGA last semester.
According to UM System president Gary Forsee, the UM System has been operating under the guidelines of Missouri Senate bill 389, which has set a limit on raising in-state, undergraduate tuition and any fee that applies to all students at that university, such as a parking or technology fee.
Under the guidelines of the bill, the only fees that universities could consider increasing would be fees to help pay off bonds or housing fees. Other types of fees have yet to be addressed, such as those that were sidelined at UM-St. Louis.
“What we haven’t dealt with yet is out-of-state tuition, graduate school tuition that are specific to a particular college. Those are decisions that will not be made until April,” Forsee said.
Even though a final decision has yet to be made regarding the fate of the fees for individual colleges, Forsee affirmed that there would be a chance that they could still go on to the board of curators for review and possibly be approved and implemented.
As the tuition freeze has yet to become official and Senate bill 389 has provided ambiguous guidelines, administrators’ plans have been in a state of flux as they try to plan ahead to provide for their budget while still keeping with the agreement.
“The president [Forsee] has said, we’re open [to fee increases] and we’re not through the legislative session yet, so who knows what is going to come out of this,” Thomas George, UM-St. Louis Chancellor, said.
Final determination of whether to move forward with the fees will come at the April board of curators meeting.
“This is still a work in progress. I wish I could give a definitive response that this is exactly what we are going to be doing,” George said.
The news that some fees might be able to go to the board of curators for approval was greeted with hope and caution by UM-St. Louis administrators.
“My understanding [is that] the campus will determine exactly which fees they want to go ahead and send forward … Obviously it gives us an opportunity to rethink those,” Curt Coonrod, vice-provost of student affairs, said.
However, Coonrod said that individual colleges will push forward with the current fees and address future increases with students in mind.
“We are concerned about affordability, we are concerned about keeping costs down as much as possible, but on the other hand [we] want to make sure we have a quality product for our students,” Coonrod said.
“It will be done very cautiously and very judicially, because we want to be sure to consider the impact on our students on any fee increase,” Coonrod added.
This concern was echoed by the deans that had proposed the fees, while giving them new hope that they may still be able to obtain funding for proposed projects through them.
“More than anything I’m trying to think now what would be the best course of action. We worry for our students; we don’t want students to have to pay any more than is absolutely necessary, and yet costs are going up,” Julie Sebastian, dean of the college of nursing, said. “Based on [news the fees may go through,] I just need to think about it before I decide what I’m going to do.”
