Brenna Patrick
Staff Writer
Across the United States, college tuition rates have increased with an often limited understanding of what the money is used for.
For the 2013-2014 school year, ISU undergraduate full-time students in-state will pay $6,342 in tuition.
Vice President for Finance and Administration James Fletcher said a college raises its tuition out of necessity.
Fletcher also said the administration still must have an increase for tuition but that increase is starting to decline.
Over the last four years there has been a 12 percent increase followed by 7 percent, 4.6 percent and 4.5 percent increases in tuition rates. This year ISU’s rate increase was the lowest it has been in 24 years.
“We spend a lot of time [trying] to keep costs low but we really operate on really tight belts,” Fletcher said.
This year ISU was deemed by Affordable Colleges online to be the 15th lowest-costing public college out of the 4,000 that were ranked in the United States.
Each student is now graduating from ISU on average $20,000 in debt, according to Fletcher.
“We’ve taken the high rates down, we don’t want burdens on students that they can’t handle,” Fletcher said.
“It’s not right for us, it’s not right for the state, it’s not right for the country,” Fletcher said.
According to last year’s financial statement, about $74 million came from ISU students’ tuition.
Fletcher said according to last year’s financial report only about 33 percent of all funds that are put into ISU’s operating expenditures come from students’ tuition and fees.
“If we weren’t getting the money we need from the state and from research and other resources we’d have to close the university down,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher added that student tuition and fees do not pay for everything. In order to operate, money has to be brought in from tuition, fees, grants, contracts and from the auxiliary.
“All tuition and fees go toward the non-instructive purposes,” said Fletcher.
Fletcher said fees for students go toward three main clusters of items: student activity, facility and technology fees that help run the university.
The facility fees go towards campus technology.
Activity funds go towards student services such as childcare services, Reed Gym, Intramural sports, Intercollegiate Athletics and more.
It also funds certain programs and organizations like ASISU, counseling services, the Debate Team, the C.W. Hog program, Leadership and Counselors services, outreach programs, the Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource center and scholarships.
Tuition pays for administrators’ funds and helping them continue to run ISU.
ISU is in debt, according to Fletcher but it has been reduced and has been paid off at $5 million a year, which is why tuition isn’t rising as much as at other universities.
Fletcher noted that ISU is older and needs more maintenance and renovations and with the lowered enrollment numbers, tuition has to be increased somewhat.
“Idaho State University’s fall 2013 total enrollment is 13,845, which is down 2.6 percent from last fall,” according to Laura Woodworth-Ney, ISU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
This number includes both graduate and undergraduate students attending ISU.
“Education should be considered an investment, not an expense,” said Fletcher.
For the 2012 year there was a $234 million deferred maintenance fee for ISU that acts as a money cushion, said Fletcher.
It is used to pay for things that break or need repairing unexpectedly.
ISU has one of the oldest campuses and has a lot of buildings that are in bad shape.
Fletcher said the administrators’ first priority is the safety of students and faculty and they have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to fix what needs fixing.
“We’ve gone through a major round of refurbishing the computers. We are moving towards making it a paperless campus,” Fletcher said.
He also added that it’s going to take a long time to get the resources to keep ISU running and more investments will have to be made to do so.
