Most UNC students have had the experience of glancing at our tuition bills and seeing a long lineup of mandatory fees. We also speak in the terms of “tuition and fees” when we discuss the true cost of higher education.
But when it comes to student fees, do we truly know what we’re paying for or why we pay them?
A cursory look at the fee list per semester reveals everything from an innocuous $0.75 fee for teaching awards to a $72.45 fee for the “Carolina Union Operating Budget” and an additional $92.93 for items labeled as “debt” for various institutions.
Although these fees may seem to come straight from South Building, the reality is much more complex — but much more open to student influence. In reality, the gatekeepers for fee changes are students. Proposed fee increases have to go through the Student Fee Audit Committee before going to administrators. Additionally, our next academic year is a “fee-setting year,” meaning that our student fees could see major reallocations during open meetings this fall.
For institutions like CAPS, which currently receives a portion of the student health fee, this could have serious impact. Our board believes CAPS counts among the most crucially important, underfunded institutions at our University and should be considered for increased fee allocation in the fall.
Though much of the power for these decisions lies in the hands of our student government, the student body has traditionally been less vocal on this issue. We applaud the pressure students routinely place on our student government, but we believe the power to shape student funds allocation is an oft-overlooked and highly impactful part of student governance.
We urge our readers to reach out to the Opere administration and make your voices heard. As these students are representing you — undergraduate and graduate students on this campus — we believe that our interests as stakeholders will only be represented once we have voiced them.
