Why are those "general student fees" so high?

Our daughter is a rising junior at a mid-size private university, and the “general student fee” has risen to more than $3,000/semester. When she started as a freshman, I asked the school about this fee and what it covered, and I was given a vague response that it includes the health center, parking, student activities, etc. But there’s a separate fee for parking and the health center, so what is this fee, and why is it so high? My son’s small LAC had fees in the $500/semester range, and they always broke it down by item (health fee, yearbook fee, etc.). I am rather frustrated that my daughter’s school won’t do the same, because I’d like to know why they’re tacking on what amounts to a more than 10 percent surcharge on tuition. Do other similar schools have the same kind of fees? Thanks for any insights into this issue!

It varies widely by school. Typically schools do reveal the amount on their websites even if they don’t break down what it covers in detail. I can think of one state that has lower tuition but very high fees (hence students awarded full tuition scholarships have to be aware of this). Not sure you are going to get a good explanation. Nor will you get out of paying it.

Debt service obligations are sometimes bundled under the “fees” heading- colleges/universities take on large loans to build the fancy amenities to attract students.

Some schools do this so they can boast about having lower tuition. Which is why cost of attendance is so much more important than tuition and room and board costs. Probably no one can explain it - it likely covers operating costs not covered by tuition, but the school didn’t want to increase tuition at too high of a percentage so they buried it in a fee.

MA is one state where the public schools have fees far higher than tuition - because tuition money to the general assembly and fees go to the schools.

Public U’s charge higher OOS tuition but the same fees for all students. This means all students pay the same for unions, rec centers et al. Tuition may be governed by the state legislature but fees are separate- one way of letting different schools have different facilities without public uproar.

^^^^ That is correct, but in MA the fees are so high that they are more than the in-state tuition. For UMass Amherst, in-state tuition is $7,700/semester. Out of state tution is $17,044. Fees (regardless of residency) are just over $8,000. And that’s not including one-time fees, lab fees, music fees, nursing fees…

Which is why students who receive the Abigail Adams scholarship, which awards full tuition to a MA state U to MA students who achieve scores above a certain cutoff, are often disappointed to find out that “full tuition” is less than 1/2 of “tuition and fees”.

Yes, just a shell game. Raise the cost through the fee and then proudly proclaim tuition has not gone up, or gone up much.

My daughter’s tuition went up about $2k per year (so $10k over the time we first looked at it when she was in high school till the time she paid the last semester) but those fees stayed exactly the same - $325 per semester. I don’t even want to know what they were for!

If the school breaks down the fees, some may not be able to be claimed for the AOTC. Transportation is one.

At some schools, there is a huge athletic fee in there. William and Mary charges about $1500 for athletics.

My kids’ school had low student fees, but many students complained they got charged for a lot stuff, life gym fee, laundry, club fee, sports tickets and such.

I personally would rather pay a la carte for the stuff my kids used rather than a flat fee.
On the other hand when you are paying 70k+ a year, what’s few thousand $$.

Some states have limits on who can approve tuition increases or how much tuition can increase. NO PROBLEM! Just increase the fees. Students are quick to break out the “NO TUITION INCREASES!” protest signs; not so quick to show up at the administration building with signs saying “FREEZE THE FEES!”

No matter how huge the fees are, they still sound like some nominal charge to make sure worn mouse pads are replaced in the library.

Our school gave detailed breakdown of the fees. They ranged from 50 cents to hundreds of dollar. What was clear was the vast array of services that a large unversity needs to fund. Some (many), my stufent never used. Others, she did. In her case it didn’t balance out but without some of the less common fees she would not have been able to attend. Overall, they seem fair and transparent.

I think the poster is correct that it is a way to deflect tuition costs, especially in states that cap or punish for higher percentage increases in tuition. I’ve always seen a breakdown of that “fee” cost which was far higher at my 3rd public uni. It’s amazing what a uni can deflect into “fees”…I could have totally forgone the fees to cover new athletic expenses/facility improvements LOL and a few other “amenity” based fees.

It seems to me that universities have a lot of expenses that they need to cover, and what gets allocated as “tuition” and what gets allocated as “fees” is somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps professors salaries should come from “tuition”, and athletic facilities should come from “fees”, but there is a lot of gray in the middle.

“colleges/universities take on large loans to build the fancy amenities to attract students.”

I certainly saw a lot of evidence of this in the many tours of universities that we went through a few years back. One of the big differences that I noticed between universities in the US versus universities outside of the US is more fancy new buildings inside the US. There are a lot of beautiful campuses in the US. The schools that we visited outside the US seemed to have fancy new buildings when they had someone’s name attached to it – usually because that person had donated the money to build the fancy new building.

I only have one daughter left in university. Her bill includes a list of fees, but the total is very modest (there are a bunch of two or three digit fees) and they are broken down so that we know what each one is going towards. I think that they add up to less than $1,000.

There is no choice…you can’t “choose” to not pay fees so packaging fees as opposed to rolling them into tuition doesn’t change anything except what a college can call “tuition.” I’ve paid a fair amount in “fees” for things my kids never used, consumed or benefited from. But yes, fortunately, the “fees” did not run into the multiple thousands. My all time favorite are the online courses my 3rd took last summer - full tuition, full fees AND an additional “on-line” course fee per credit hour…and at $40 a credit hour that is a hefty fee if you 4 or more summer courses which is easy to do since they are concentrated over a shorter period of time.

The main lesson is to compare TOTAL cost of attendance when researching colleges.

Sometimes I think colleges have high Fees to keep tuition lower… and thus full tuition scholarships lower. MA / Amherst (mentioned above) is a good example.

My daughter at a STEM school had low fees ($325/sem) but her tuition was about $2000/yr higher because she was in engineering. No additional lab fees. I thought it was stupid because 65% of the students were in a STEM subject, so only a few paid the lower tuition.

Other daughter at a public school had low tuition (even for OOS) and a fairly hefty student fees (included all sports including football and basketball), and also had to pay lab fees for theater and dance, a printing fee, and I just saw a $180 ‘advising’ fee. Really, that one’s a rip off since I’ve been correcting her schedule for years.

My daughter is at a university with a full tuition scholarship and high fees. We knew that fees weren’t covered, but the COA estimate was way off. COA estimate included $4K in fees; we paid almost $10K in fees last year. The issues that contributed to her higher fees:

  1. Many of the fees are per credit hour. The COA estimate assumes you’re taking 12 credit hours per term. She took 19 per term.
  2. Many of the per-credit-hour fees are set by the colleges in differing amounts. The COA estimate assumes all of your classes are in one of the less expensive college. The Business college fees are way more than other colleges.

If you charge $50k a year for tuition, you can throw in a $3,000 charge without too many people noticing.