Student fees used to pay for various programs and activities are increasing at higher rates than tuition at UW System schools this year, increasing almost 18 percent at UW-Madison.
Tuition increased by 5.5 percent, rising from $6,000 to $6,330 this year, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Fees increased from $726 to $854, approximately 17.6 percent.
UW System spokesperson David Giroux said the higher rate of increases in fees is due to the amount of student fee money dealt with being less than the amount of tuition, so an increase of only a few dozen dollars dramatically increases the rate.
Let's not be fooled by the percentages,"" Giroux said.
Giroux said the higher rates are largely due to more student organizations competing for a diminishing amount of money available. UW System schools continue to rank near the top of lists in terms of affordability, according to Giroux.
Declining state support and access to financial aid are more important factors than student segregated fees in terms of affecting access to UW System schools, Giroux said.
Student fees can be broken down into allocable and non-allocable segregated fees.
Allocable fees are partially controlled by students, but they account for only 12 percent of the total fees, according to the website for the campus student government Associated Students of Madison.
Around 78 percent of the fees are non-allocable, dealing with personnel commitments and contracts. Non-allocable fees are more controlled by UW System administrators, with less direct control by students.
The Student Services Finance Committee is the part of ASM that deals with allocable segregated fees. SSFC Chair Alex Gallagher said allocable fees went down from last year, while non-allocable fees increased over $100.
According to Gallagher, fee increases this year are also due to the referendums dealing with renovating Memorial Union and changing Union South that students voted on last year.
Beth Czarnecki, Chair of the Roman Catholic Foundation-UW-Madison, said her group depends on segregated fees for almost all of their funding. She said groups like RCF-UW have no control over the increases in fees when they ask for funding.
Czarnecki said it would be a ""struggle"" for RCF-UW to fully fund all of its programs if segregated fees were significantly reduced.
She said she has not noticed any negative attention towards RCF-UW from students due to fee increases.
- The Wisconsin State Journal contributed to this report
