The typical university student is surrounded by financial jargon and buzzwords as they maneuver through his or her college years. By the end of four years, students know that professors are paid obscenely high salaries, parking costs are impossible and segregated fees are why we all have to eat Ramen. All these topics sound familiar enough, but upon further investigation, the average student's knowledge about the actual facts surrounding these issues is minimal at best.
For instance, most students know that it takes years of education to teach at the university level and that warrants a paycheck. But not many know they can see how much this paycheck is.
""The public has a right to know the salaries and budgets since it's their money,"" Brian Campbell, a freshman at UW-Madison, said.
Students can find out faculty salary information at http://www.uwsa.edu/budplan/redbook/ which shows the UW-System's Red Budget Book information. ""The UW-System is a public institution, and salary information has been available for many years,"" said Kate Dixon, spokesperson for the UW- System Office of Communications. ""The state of Wisconsin has a system that it uses to track state employment positions, including titles and salaries for every employee.""
UW-Madison faculty are public employees of the state, and under Chapter 19.31 of the Wisconsin Statutes, this salary and budgeting information is required to be available to the public. According to Dixon, this information has been available online since 2000 to cut back on printing costs.
Another financial gray area of great importance to students is segregated fees, the extra amount of money tacked onto tuition every year to fund various campus programs.
Students are required to pay the fees, and cannot obtain grades or graduate without doing so. According to the UW-System website, these fees ""support the primary mission of the university."" This year's fees total $365 per semester per student.
According to Bill Richner of the Office of Budget, Planning and Analysis, under UW- System policy No. 37 (Segregated Fee Determination and Distribution), the Student Services Finance Committee and Chancellor make the decisions regarding the allocation of funds, with the Board of Regents having final authority.
In November 1999, former law students from UW-Madison argued in front of the Supreme Court that the segregated fees were unconstitutional because, according to the UW-System website, ""the mandatory segregated fee system forced them to support political and ideological organizations with which they disagree, thus violating their First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of association. The students specifically named 18 campus-related organizations to which they objected on political, ideological or religious grounds.""
However, the students ultimately lost and the segregated fees remain a part of tuition.
In addition many students may be unaware of the actual facts when it comes to parking on campus.
According to Lance Lunsway, director of Transportation Services, on-campus parking has been restructured in the last five years, and consists of a three-tiered rate system of annual permits, park-n-ride, daily/monthly and meters. The rates for annual parking begin at $445 per year and increase in price up to $1035 per year for various lots, making it more expensive to park on campus than to pay segregated fees.
Although mopeds do not have all the comforts of a car, they are significantly cheaper to park, with annual permits costing $55 per year for either a moped or motor scooter.
""I think parking is hard to find. I don't commute because it's a waste of money and resources,"" Aaron Coopman, a UW-Madison senior said.
According to Lunsway, on-campus annual rates increase approximately $5 to $25 each year. The daily parking has increased by $1 since last year and meter rates remain fixed at $1 per hour.
The reasons for the increases are numerous and widespread.
""Gas prices, concrete prices, construction cost, upkeep costs ... all have to do with the operating and capitol expenses, and determine the revenues needed to offset them,"" Lunsway said. ""Transportation Services generates its own revenue, so any spike in expenses has an effect on the budget.""
Monthly and daily permits are available to anyone at any time on a space-availability basis, while meters are open to all. However, finding a place to park a vehicle is increasingly difficult.
""There are around 13,000 parking spaces on campus for a community of roughly 18,000 faculty and staff, 42,000 students and one million visitors annually,"" Lunsway said.
