Students at Georgia Southern University will be paying as much as $100 a semester in new sports-oriented fees under action the state Board of Regents took Tuesday.
One fee allows the school in Statesboro to expand its stadium to provide more seating for students. The other fee would offset the costs of the university moving up to the highest division of NCAA football and would only go into effect should Georgia Southern be invited to join a league at that level.
The regents’ approval comes after students overwhelmingly supported the fees during a special vote held this fall. It illustrates an interesting situation — students often oppose tuition increases but are willing to pay higher fees for perks on campus.
Students remain concerned about affording college but they “voted in favor for the fees because they viewed the changes as an investment in their college experience,” said Dominique Quarles, president of the college’s student government association.
Colleges have long charged fees on top of tuition, but these costs have become an ever-larger part of the cost of getting a degree. These fees are typically used to pay for things students demand beyond basic academics, such as athletics or activity centers with rock-climbing walls.
A freshman at Georgia Southern paid $2,426 a semester in tuition and $936 a semester in mandatory fees this fall. In fall 2007, a freshman paid $1,479 a semester in tuition and $562 a semester in mandatory fees.
The University System of Georgia took in more than $500 million in fees during the 2012 fiscal year, up from the nearly $222 million collected during the 2007 fiscal year.
The largest part of students’ mandatory fees, the “special institutional fee,” was supposed to end this past summer but the regents kept it because it brings in $210 million a year. The regents started the fee in January 2009 in response to continued cuts in state funding.
The fee has skyrocketed. Georgia Tech students paid $100 a semester when it started and now pay $544 a semester.
The new fees at Georgia Southern include a $40 athletic facility fee to expand Allen E. Paulson Stadium by about 6,300 seats. The additional seats are for students. The stadium currently has 4,000 seats dedicated for student use, but enrollment tops 20,000. The expansion will increase the stadium’s capacity to 20,744.
Of the $40 fee, only $25 is a new charge. The remaining $15 will be redirected from an existing athletic fee.
Students also will pay $75 a semester to support the cost of Georgia Southern becoming a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision within the NCAA. The fee would be collected only if the university joins a conference in the FBS. President Brooks Keel said the school hopes to receive an offer this spring.
The regents also approved a $14 increase in a fee at Gordon College in Barnesville that is scheduled to begin next fall.
The regents previously approved the college’s new student activity and recreation center fee to be $125 a semester. It will now be $139 so the college can still raise the same amount of money, even though enrollment dropped this year.
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