Spring Break
N.J. colleges use fees to get around tuition caps
Patricia Alex (The Record/MCT)
Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: Money & Business
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HACKENSACK, N.J. - Each student at William Paterson University has to pay $650 a year for a building that doesn't yet exist and most may never set foot in. At Rutgers, each student pays $286 annually to support intercollegiate athletics. In return, they get tickets to sporting events many will not attend.
The charges are part of mandatory student fees that have soared at New Jersey's public colleges - averaging close to $3,000 a year in New Jersey - and helped make them among the most expensive in the nation.
Fees have been used to circumvent mandated tuition caps and to make up for lagging state support of the schools. The trend is not unique to New Jersey, but has accelerated there as the state's budget crunch has squeezed public colleges and universities. In some cases, the fees pay for the extraordinary debt amassed by the schools.
"Most students have no idea what the fees are going toward,'' Louisa Valentin-Melendez, editor of the student newspaper at William Paterson University, where the fees are approaching $4,000 a year. "We have to pay, and pretty much hope the school knows what they are doing."
Such trust might be short-lived if the fees continue to climb. At William Paterson, fees now amount to 39 percent of the tuition bill - a breach of the informal cap of 30 percent that long prevailed at the state schools.
Fees at New Jersey's nine state colleges and universities, excluding Rutgers, have jumped nearly 60 percent in the past five years, averaging increases of about 13 percent a year compounded, said Paul Shelly, spokesman for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities. Tuition at those schools has doubled in the last 10 years while fees have tripled, a report released last week by the State Commission of Investigation found.
"Fees are definitely a concern,'' said James A. Boyle, president of College Parents of America. "And there is even more concern when there is a lack of information about where these fees are going. Many times it's amorphous."
The charges are part of mandatory student fees that have soared at New Jersey's public colleges - averaging close to $3,000 a year in New Jersey - and helped make them among the most expensive in the nation.
Fees have been used to circumvent mandated tuition caps and to make up for lagging state support of the schools. The trend is not unique to New Jersey, but has accelerated there as the state's budget crunch has squeezed public colleges and universities. In some cases, the fees pay for the extraordinary debt amassed by the schools.
"Most students have no idea what the fees are going toward,'' Louisa Valentin-Melendez, editor of the student newspaper at William Paterson University, where the fees are approaching $4,000 a year. "We have to pay, and pretty much hope the school knows what they are doing."
Such trust might be short-lived if the fees continue to climb. At William Paterson, fees now amount to 39 percent of the tuition bill - a breach of the informal cap of 30 percent that long prevailed at the state schools.
Fees at New Jersey's nine state colleges and universities, excluding Rutgers, have jumped nearly 60 percent in the past five years, averaging increases of about 13 percent a year compounded, said Paul Shelly, spokesman for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities. Tuition at those schools has doubled in the last 10 years while fees have tripled, a report released last week by the State Commission of Investigation found.
"Fees are definitely a concern,'' said James A. Boyle, president of College Parents of America. "And there is even more concern when there is a lack of information about where these fees are going. Many times it's amorphous."
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