Shelbie Harris
News Editor
As an undergraduate at Idaho State University, you would assume $6,700 paid by each student in annual tuition would be enough to cover the cost of instruction, course curriculum and required supplies like dry-erase markers or Scantron tests.
“Back in 2010, when the colleges got reorganized, our materials and supplies budget was slashed by 75 percent,” said Robert Fisher, chair of ISU’s mathematics department. “We were literally unable to print tests. Since then, it has risen to about $12,000, but realistically I need about $26,000.”
Though ISU brought in $88 million in tuition and fee revenue and $68 million in state appropriations for 2015, plenty of operating budgets for departments have remained uncomfortably lean.
Some departments’ budgets are so thin they must rely on assistance from additional class fees to tackle the issue of providing materials and supplies to students or compensating adjunct professors for their pedagogical services.
“In civil engineering, mechanical engineering and to some extent, electrical engineering, our numbers have went through the roof as far as enrollment,” said Bruce Savage, chair of ISU’s civil and environmental engineering department. “But even though our students have doubled, our budget seen as a department has increased zero.”
Savage added the civil engineering department has been fortunate enough not to be where mathematics was five years ago, as most course fees in that department pay for materials; however, other departments’ course fees can range from as little as $5 for a basic turbine engine course to as much as $1,450 for the dietetics internship.
“The appropriation of the state to the institution, combined with tuition, should cover any kind of expense like that,” Fisher said. “The budget should be there so that someone who is behaving responsibly, and not desperately, can do the normal business of educating students.”
A 2009 document published on the ISU website states, “Ordinarily, class fees may not be charged supplies, materials, equipment and services that have broad departmental usage such as paper, photocopying and clerical assistance.”
A document explaining the utility of a $5 fee for all undergraduate math courses states, “This fee is used to supplement funding to help pay expenses that the state appropriated budget does not cover. It is used toward educational software license renewal and maintenance costs, proctoring and grader expenses, costs associated with printing exams and math classroom and equipment maintenance.”
It seems by keeping operating budgets as low as possible and approving class fees for reasons that would ordinarily be unacceptable, the ISU administration can allocate tuition and fee dollars in other directions.
“Operating budgets are things that are funded from the general fee structure of the University,” said Vice President of Finance and Administration, James Fletcher. “That’s our tuition, and university-wide fees like the technology fee.”
On top of course specific fees, an eISU fee of $35 per credit accompanies all online courses at ISU, with $20 per credit designated to the college or division offering the course and $15 per credit hour to the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Vice President of Finance and Administration.
Within the colleges, eISU revenue may fund expenses like software purchases, curriculum development and supplemental materials that support, directly and indirectly, the continued growth and development of eISU courses and curriculum, states the ISU website.
Despite ISU revenues exceeding expenses for nearly the past decade, departments depend heavily on eISU fee revenue to compensate adjunct faculty or to purchase upgraded equipment.
“[The Administration] have really clamped down on what I can spend [eISU fees] on, ” said Chair of the Communications, Media, & Persuasion department, James DiSanza. “EISU fees go toward computers for faculty that are teaching the online courses and we pay for adjunct instructors who are teaching online courses. If I did not have that money, those courses could not be taught because I have no other way to pay for them.”
The administration is threatening to take away the allocation of eISU funds used to pay these instructors, added DiSanza.
Sidney Fellows is a sophomore studying Health Care Administration and has yet to take an online course, however, she vicariously feels frustrated for her fellow classmates who have.
“To pay extra fees on top of tuition would suck just because we’re already paying so much for school as it is,” she said. “Even if it’s only $100, that’s $100 you could save. That is groceries for two weeks or money for a concert. I feel so restrained with money in college, especially during the school year, that when I make little savings like that it does help a lot.”
According to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 and CNN Money reports a 31.9 percent change in average tuition for Idaho from 2008 to 2015.
It would seem an increase in tuition would lead to higher faculty salaries and increased operating budgets for individual departments, though, this turns out not to be the case for ISU.
“Our salaries are still not up to national norms,” said Jennifer Attebery, chair of ISU’s English and philosophy department. “Tuition should cover instructional costs and it is extraordinarily unfortunate that is not occurring.”
A recent survey conducted by the Albertson Family Foundation titled, “The People’s Review of Education in Idaho,” ranks Idaho in the bottom 10 on key educational measures: Forty-first for high school graduation and fiftieth for the percentage of teens who further their education after high school.
Many states, such as Missouri, have enacted limitations on the maximum amount tuition can increase over the previous year. Others, like Maryland and Washington, utilize changes in median income to influence tuition increases.
Though state appropriated funds have increased in Idaho over the past few years, there is always a potential for more. And until state legislatures understand students shouldn’t be burdened with fronting the cost of an education that’s equal to the investment on a small home, it’s hard to think Idaho will ever claw its way from the bottom of the barrel when it comes to education.
Sam D’Amico is a senior studying nuclear engineering and political science who also attended high school in Pocatello. He is no stranger to additional fees outside of tuition, and the underwhelming support offered by the state from K-12 to post-secondary education.
“I think it’s sad departments don’t get the money to the things they need to do,” he said. “They have to get the money from somewhere and its regrettable they have to get it from students. That should be the last place they have to turn to. But, I have this crazy idea that a state university should be funded by the state.”
