Despite the Cal State University system-wide tuition freeze, several campuses are seeing new Student Success Fees that are leaving some students asking for more transparency.
Nine campuses, including Cal State Long Beach, have implemented mandatory Student Success Fees that CSU leaders say are needed to cover student programs, technologies and class offerings that would otherwise be eliminated.
Before former CSULB President F. King Alexander left for Louisiana State University last spring, he increased the CSULB Student Excellence Fee by $79 per semester, bringing it up to $173 per semester.
Five other campuses, including San Diego State University, Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Dominguez Hills, are looking to implement similar fees.
Sophomore marketing major Karmine Tawagon said students should be able to vote on all new fees and increases.
“I don’t know about other campuses because what their students can afford might be different with what we can afford, but [at CSULB] it seems like they’re doing the increases all the same time,” Tawagon said. “We’ll get a better experience, but students can’t focus if they’re so worried about finding money to pay for college.”
Associated Students Inc. Vice President Jonathon Bolin said that although it would be ideal for students to vote on such fees, student voting could cause proposed fee increases to fail.
“It would be great if all students were informed enough and saw the value in the fees to vote ‘yes’ for it, but in reality I don’t think that would actually happen,” Bolin said.
Bolin also said that while some students don’t want to pay more in fees, others are complaining about areas where the campus is lacking.
“Students complain about bottleneck courses, not enough professors, how the buildings suck, the technology is bad, and all those things have to be fixed, and that usually involves some monetary entity,” he said.
California State Student Association Executive Director Miles Nevin said the main issue being discussed in CSSA is the lack of financial support from the state.
“It’s ironic that there are so many critics of these fees when these fees are designed to do what the state is not doing,” Nevin said. “Most of our conversations are about academic success and completion and students getting classes they need to graduate. All of those unfortunate experiences come from the fact that the system is not funded at the level that it should be.”
While some CSU campuses have not made any move regarding new fees or fee increases, senior psychology major Andrew Kang said campuses could help better inform students about fee decisions by explaining where the money is going.
“There should be a source, both privatized and within the school, that displays how this student excellence fees affect you, where exactly it’s going,” Kang said. “It’s a matter of how effective these fees are, whether you actually benefit as an individual student, or whether the benefits go to something else … as for now, I’m just not really sure where the money is going.”
