By KAITLIN BAIN Senior reporter
Texas Tech student fees have not changed much during the last five years, and the process that goes into deciding the fees hasn’t changed much either. Mike Gunn, director of Student Government Association, said the state mandates that student government chair all committees that decide how to allocate student fees. A primary fee student government deals with is the student service fee, he said, which funds student support services. “That would be your campus life, your student judicial programs, your dean of students officer, student government, student organizations,” he said. “It’s about 20 departments that we support with the fee, so that’s one of the most expensive fees we have on campus
that benefits students directly.” According to the Tech Global Fee Document, which presents a summary of all tuition, fees and other charges students encounter when paying for their college careers, the student service fee is a flat fee. The fee funds activities separate from the regularly scheduled university activities. It is charged per semester based on recommendations from the Student Services Fee Advisory Committee, and is $142 for each student enrolled in four or more semester credit hours and $71 for students enrolled in less than four semester credit hours. “With the student service fee, historically what we’ve done, every department that’s going to ask for fees, we have them submit a packet of information to us, their projected budget and a PowerPoint explaining what their department does,” Gunn said. “We review that
as a committee and at the end of that, we actually have each of them come in and present to us for about 15 minutes.” The committee then reviews the applications and assigns amounts to the various areas that applied for funding, he said. The committee does not like to raise fees, he said, which can be seen through the $4 change the fee has seen during the last five years, according to the Global Fee Document. As a result, Gunn said, the process of allocating money from the student service fee is more thoughtful and intentional than the allocation of other fees. “So we need the entire story because one, we have a lot of students on the university and a lot of services that we provide,” he said, “and two, money is very limited and no one wants to raise fees.” STUDENT FEES continued on Page 3 ➤➤