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NEWS
| DECEMBER 2, 2005
Tuition and Fees
Flat rate accepted conditionally
Committee doesn’t want Student
Services Fees to separate from main panel.
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| The Shorthorn: Manikandan Sachidanandan |
| Collins Watson, Graduate Student
Senate president, left, discusses with Student
Congress President Josh Sawyer on Thursday night in University
Center’s Rio Grande Ballroom. The Tuition Review
Committee was willing to accept Provost Dana Dunn’s
tuition proposal only if President Spaniolo agreed with
their counter-tuition proposal. |
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By C
J Patton
The Shorthorn staff
The Tuition Review Committee offered an olive branch to the Office
of the Provost on Thursday, offering to accept the controversial
flat-rate tuition proposal under the condition that Student Service
Fees remain separate from the main tuition committee.
Provost Dana Dunn’s proposal, submitted at the first Tuition
Review Committee meeting Nov. 18, calls for rolling all tuition
and fee charges into one lump sum. This would allow the Tuition
Review Committee and the Fee Oversight Committee to combine into
one body which would govern raises and distributions of tuition
and fees.
Student Congress President Josh Sawyer, the committee’s chair,
said that keeping the Student Service Fee Advisory Committee was
non-negotiable.
“The one thing that is most dear and important to our hearts
is the Student Service Advisory Committee,” he said. “Student
Service Fees are what we use on a daily basis to operate student
life.”
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| The Shorthorn: Scott Russell |
| The Tuition Review Committee
met to make the final decision on the proposed
tuition Thursday evening in the Rio Grande Ballroom. |
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With unanimous consensus by the committee
members, Sawyer will compose his recommendation to President James
Spaniolo to be delivered Monday. He said a number of modifications
and suggestions will be made to Dunn’s original proposal and
that their approval of the flat-rate system depends solely on Spaniolo’s
acceptance of the new stipulations.
“We will accept the flat-rate tuition system with the proposed
system that we recommended,” he said. “The flat-rate
system is not accepted without the tuition process proposal.”
Collins Watson, Graduate Student Senate president, explained that
having all fees
controlled by one committee leaves no room for accountability. Student-paid
fees that fund student-oriented programs should be overseen by a
student committee, he said.
“This is our checks and balances,” he said. “We’ve
got to catch huge issues. Our huge issue is catching future issues.”
They also discussed the tuition increase manifested after the flat-rate
tuition is implemented. Dunn’s proposal calls for an overall
increase of 22 percent, on average, from current tuition prices
and an additional 5 percent increase in the 2007-08 academic year.
“A 22-26 percent jump in one year is unacceptable,”
Watson said. “I would be very amenable — instead of
the 22-5 jump — to stagger it.”
Other alternatives were proposed to Dunn’s plan, which increases
tuition drastically for students taking between 12 and 15 hours.
Watson favored reducing the initial increase to 19 percent, others
a 15-12 split, and some proposing a 5-22.
Industrial engineering professor Jamie Rogers, the Undergraduate
Assembly representative on the committee, suggested setting some
of the money aside from the increase to be placed into a fund, which
would be used as a one-time grant to aid students near graduation
hit hardest by the hike.
“If you’re about to graduate, and all of a sudden, ‘Oops!
I’ve got to pay $600 more. Where’s it going to come
from?’ ” she said. “If maybe there’s a fund
there to help the really needy, then we can go 22-5.”
Although the committee was unable to come to a conclusion on how
an acceptable increase plan might look, it was decided that the
proposal would include a recommendation for financial officers to
lower the initial increase and lessen the impact on students.
Brad Urban, community and parent representative, said the proposal
as it stands is too harsh to students working their way through
college. While there are students on campus for whom money is no
problem, they are in a distinct minority, he said.
“You’ve got another set of students who are like, ‘I
can’t pay five more dollars.’ ” he said. “That’s
the group that’s going to get hit the hardest by this.”
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