Our View

“Why am I paying $253 for an activity and athletic fee when I don’t participate?” “I don’t use the library, so why do I have to pay $30 for it?”

These are the kind of questions that irked USA President Gordon Moulton, basic questions about the fairness of the fee structure at the University. So Moulton and the Board of Trustees took a drastic step – now we can’t see what fees we’re paying.

In its June 10 meeting, University of South Alabama’s governing body, the Board of Trustees, voted to lump in the fees along with tuition, so students now get charged a flat rate for tuition, $227 per credit hour, without the separate line items for each fee.

The resolution approving the change proclaimed it to be a victory for a “simpler tuition structure,” “easier cost comparisons among institutions,” “greater predictability in budgeting,” and “less complicated billing.”

But Moulton revealed another reason at the Board meeting: “Invariably, some students say, ‘Well I don’t participate in that. Why should I have to pay for it?’”

We challenge the way the University pelts us with fees, so the administration hides them from us?

We deserve to know how much we’re paying for particular services like the JagTran and the Student Center. To keep us in the dark about our tuition bill raises other questions about why the University feels such a need to hide it.

By all this, we don’t mean to suggest that the University had some malicious intent to deceive students and parents about the true cost of college. The arguments they gave do carry some weight.

It will be easier to compare costs for different colleges without all of the fees on the bill. It will be simpler. And it will be more efficient from an administrative standpoint.

All of these things are true, but it doesn’t outweigh the price: transparency.

And this problem didn’t even come up in the Board meeting. None of the people who govern this University brought up whether or not this practice would be honest or even fair for the students.

Maybe that’s what troubles us the most.