As more colleges renege on promises of an in-person fall and move to a virtual format, student fees — charges earmarked for athletics and other extracurricular programming — are coming under scrutiny.
Late last week, students at Towson University circulated a petition calling for it to drop its $499 athletics fee after it suspended fall sports. So far, more than 4,300 people have signed, but the university has declined to refund the charge.
“TU remains committed to providing support for all student-athletes, teams, and coaches as part of our charge as a nationally ranked, Division I university,” Sean Welsh, interim vice president for marketing and communications, wrote in an email. “As such, athletics fees will remain in place this semester to help honor that commitment.”
Towson, part of the University System of Maryland, is among a number of colleges maintaining pre-pandemic prices for student activities, even as others reduce or eliminate charges for services they can no longer render.
“Fees in general have been a contentious conversation even well before the Covid environment,” said Kevin Kruger, president of Naspa, an association of student-affairs administrators.
Activity fees tend to fund student-organization budgets or recreation centers, Kruger explained. Some of the fees will now finance online programming or virtual health and wellness support. Colleges must decide, he said, if the fees are still relevant when student organizations can’t meet in person this fall.
“The critical question of the day,” he said, is whether colleges can offer the same value online as they did in person. Another consideration: Those fees can act as barriers to low-income students.
At the same time, Kruger noted, these are tough financial times for institutions, and eliminating fees could exacerbate that strain.
“If there are places where the fees can be reduced,” he said, “campuses are, and should, be looking at that.”
Some Colleges Cut Fees
Many college athletics leagues, such as the Atlantic 10 Conference, the Colonial Athletic Association, and the Commonwealth Coast Conference, have canceled or postponed sports seasons this fall. In some cases, student fees that help support those programs are wrapped into charges that include other services.
The University of New England, a private institution in Maine, charges students a general-services fee that covers athletics-event attendance, library fees, graduation costs, and other charges. The university’s athletics conference, the Commonwealth Coast Conference, has suspended its fall sports season, but the institution, which plans to offer an in-person semester, will still charge the same amount — $1,360 — as in previous years.
Union College, a private liberal-arts institution in New York, will charge a comprehensive fee that includes tuition, room and board, and student activities. The amount will be similar to that of previous years: $74,085.
But this fall there will be no athletics season or intramural sports, and student clubs, organizations, and events will be virtual, socially distant, or both.
“We have to meet the needs of all of our students and … we must include students who choose to return to campus and those who choose to study remotely,” a Union College spokesman said.
Other campuses are adjusting their charges.
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania plans a mostly online semester this fall, but the public campus’s fitness center will be available to students living on campus, along with limited programming.
Regardless of their housing situation, students will not be charged a “University Center” fee of $320 for a full course load for the fall semester, and the student-activity fee will be reduced to $120 from $225 for students taking 12 to 18 credits (a normal course load), to “support activities for on-campus students and student clubs and organizations.” Edinboro’s reopening plan explains that “fees will also help Edinboro personnel provide virtual events for the broader student body.”
The College of New Jersey plans a hybrid model for the fall, and will be reducing fees and not raising tuition for a semester with fewer options for students than usual.
Kathryn A. Foster, the public college’s president, said it had eliminated the student-activity fee and fall payment of the student-center fee.
“We knew that social distancing would preclude student activities this fall,” Foster said. Altogether, the college cut student costs by $436, including a 12-percent drop in student fees.
“We also reduced the board charges, as in room and board,” Foster said, by 14 percent for the year. “We did that partly because we knew we would not have the same offerings as we would in non-Covid times.”
She said the college had received “all positive” feedback from students, and “the parents were quite pleased” as well, at the nearly $1,100 in total cost reduction.