READER CONDEMNS: "Hidden" MU tuition hikes

I send this email to you, Mike, with a certain trepidation from an email account that cannot easily be traced back to me.  I am an MU alum, parent and faculty member.  I take issue with this paragraph from the October 22 Columbia Daily Tribune article on page 12A, Financial outlook could mean higher tuition:

"MU's tuition -- $245.60 per credit hour for resident undergraduates -- remained flat this year in a deal between public universities and Gov. Jay Nixon.  Nixon vowed to not withhold money for higher education if universities agreed to not raise tuition."

What a scam!  There was a deal all right -- a wink and a nod among curators, administrators and the governor's office because they created a technicality two years ago that allowed them to publicly brag about not raising tuitition.  I've been biting my tongue for two years but seeing this article in the Tribune made me decide to point this out to someone. 

 

My sense is that you are the only person who might actually dig into it.

Starting two years ago, supplemental per-semester-hour fees were quietly added to student bills while tuition "remained flat." The original concept was that certain courses had unusual expenses associated with them that justified an added fee over and above the ordinary credit-hour fee.  Such fees required approval by the chancellor's office, but they quickly spread across colleges and got tacked on to all courses within each of several colleges.  Supplemental fees have become a cash cow for some departments.

 

As a faculty member, I acknowledge that without them, many departments would be operating in the red from budget shortfalls. 

But as a parent and alum, I am furious about the duplicity of MU administration.  Undergraduate engineering students have actually seen their fees increase by a whopping 23%, when you add the $54.50 per credit hour "Additional Course Fee" to base tuition of $245.60 per credit hour.  

 

Handily, as a "supplemental fee," additional course fees are not covered by tuition waivers for graduate students or by tuition reduction benefits for dependents of MU employees. 

 

A full-time undergraduate in engineering taking a 15-hour load now pays an extra $817.50 per semester in additional course fees.  See the chart below from the MU Undergraduate Admissions website at http://admissions.missouri.edu/costsAndFinancialAid/costs/index.php. 

Additional Course Fees

 

Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources $40.30/credit hour
Business $34.60/hr
Education $34.60/hr
Engineering $54.50/hr
Human Environmental Sciences  $37.50/hr
Journalism $40.30/hr
Allied Health $53.30/hr
Science Lab $10.80/hr

You can call it what you want, but the bottom line is that an "additional course fee" is a hidden tax that hits students and parents in the pocketbook BIG TIME.  So MU administrators really need to stop whining in the newspaper about budget shortfalls and patting themselves on the back because "MU's tuition...remained flat..."  That, frankly, is a big fat lie. 

 

Political shenanigans and technical half truths do not enhance the university's public image in the long run, and the truth needs to come out.

 

Signed: 

Ticked Off MU Parent!