In the shadow of the 3.7 percent tuition increase, Boston University officials announced that student fees will also increase. While the Resnet fee has been cut altogether, undergraduates on the Charles River Campus in the fall of 2013 will have to pay a Student Services fee for $260 per semester, a $160 Health and Wellness fee and a $50 Community Services fee. This totals to $470 a semester in student fees. There is only $7 net increase in the total amount of student fees per semester. The administration has now clearly clarified exactly where BU students’ fees are going.
Originally, the Undergraduate Student fee and the Resnet fee covered WiFi, student events, athletics and a myriad of other costly events on campus. Students only knew that their student fees disappeared into a financial abyss to fund charity events through the Student Activities Office or invite guests to speak at the school. By eliminating the general Undergraduate fee, administrators have successfully unmasked how the budget has been divvied up for the next academic year. Now students can clearly see that $50 of their fees has been allotted solely for club activities on campus.
These fees all directly relate to the quality of the education and experience on campus, but students still have to deal with automatic charges to their accounts they are not required to pay. Although students do not have the choice to pay these new student fees or not, students can opt out of the Student Sports Pass. Administrators inform students of this option, but it is never made explicitly clear that they can opt out of this fee.
The narrative about how BU is too expensive is heard throughout the campus. Many students do not know that this option is available and end up paying another $115 a year. Instead of making automatic payments for non-essential student fees, students should be able to “opt in” for the Student Sports Pass. Comparatively small fees such as the Sports Pass should not be automatic payments to student accounts because they do not directly affect education.
The change in nomenclature does bring us to question why there was originally a Resnet fee and why it was $332 a semester. Where was this money going? It brings to question how the Budget Office originally split up student fees. Nonetheless, the increase in transparency should give students some solace because they now clearly know exactly how their money is being spent.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
