Segregated fees for students across the UW System will increase $59 on average during the upcoming fiscal year as a part of the System’s 2016-’17 operating budget, which was approved by the Board of Regents Thursday.
The budget itself comes out at a time when state general purpose revenue is at an all-time low for the System after adjusting for inflation, according to System President Ray Cross.
By the end of the next fiscal year, Cross said tuition fund balances will have decreased roughly 67 percent from their 2012-’13 levels.
Julie Gordon, the System’s interim vice president of finance, explained that expenditures outweigh revenues in several areas of the budget, meaning the fund balances will continue to drop.
The segregated fee changes range from a $4 decrease at UW-Platteville to a $259 increase at UW-La Crosse and are mostly comprised of funding for capital projects previously approved by the board, Gordon said.
The remaining 30 percent of the fee is directed largely toward† student-initiated programming.
At UW-Madison, where students will see a $72 hike in segregated fees over the course of the next year, $59 of that increase came from an Associated Students of Madison initiative to provide funding for University Health Services in areas like mental health and sexual assault prevention.
Associated Students of Madison Chair Carmen Goséy said although she plans to be critical of segregated fee use and work to prevent it from increasing further, it is important to let students decide what they want to do with their money.
Goséy said that if large increases like this one were to be asked for in the future, it would be a transparent conversation that considers the balance between student need and keeping costs down.
“These aren’t unilateral decisions that me or the [Student Services Finance Committee] chair makes,” Goséy said. “It involves a lot of voices on campus.”
Prices for room and board are also expected to rise system-wide. UW-Madison students will see a $203 increase for residence hall living, one of the steepest increases of all the System schools.
UW-Madison junior Yasmeena Ougayour, a first-generation college student who pays all of her schooling expenses on her own, said she understands that the rising fees provide students with resources on campus but also acknowledged that they will add up over her years in school.
“I think it is time for the Board of Regents to understand that these extra fees here and there may not seem like much right now,” Ougayour said. “But what about the students that have to work late hours and still excel in the rigorous courses that our campus offers?”
The regents also voted unanimously to approve a request for UW students to receive more need-based aid in the upcoming state biennial budget.
Funding for the Wisconsin Grant, an aid package that served more than 32,000 students in 2014-’15, has not increased in six years according to Bob Jokisch, the System’s senior policy advisor for financial aid.
The regents approved a request to increase funding for the grant by roughly $19 million in the next biennium. Gov. Scott Walker will have the final say over whether that request is granted.
