Broad-based fees, sums charged to all students, make up over $2,900 of charges on Oswego State students’ bills each year.

Most of these charges are mandatory, but students can choose to opt-out of several others. Victoria Furlong, Oswego State’s assistant vice president for finance and budget, said students can waive the insurance fee, which is $700 per semester, as well as the alumni, arts and sustainability fees.

Some students are not aware of what the mandatory fees go toward, though they are obligated to pay each semester. Furlong said each fee provides students with the availability of services, but it is up to students to take advantage of these.

David Hite, an Oswego State freshman, said he did careful research on each of the fees on his bill.

“My father said that if I was going to pay for my college education, I should look into what I’m paying for,” Hite said.

He called the admissions office to talk about the more “obscure” fees listed on his bill.

“I don’t want to do what a lot of students would do and say, ‘Oh, since it’s on my bill, I’m just going to throw $100 out there,” Hite said. “I feel that a lot of students today blindly pay for their education without being concerned as to where the money is going.”

Since Hite is a freshman, he had to pay a mandatory orientation fee, which he was not happy to do.

“I think an orientation is more of an informative experience and I don’t think we as students should necessarily have to pay for an introduction to our college experience,” Hite said.

The first mandatory fee all Oswego State students are billed for is called the college fee, which is $12.50 each semester. Though departments look at their budgets every year to determine how much they will need from students, the college fee has not changed in “forever,” Furlong said.

The college fee is used for the upkeep of buildings, to bring them up to code and for repairing damages done to buildings, according to Oswego State’s website.

Next, students pay a health center fee of $178 per semester. This fee is different from the health insurance charge and is mandatory. Furlong said this money goes toward students needing immunizations, physicals, medicine and counseling. It also funds programming supplies, advertising, marketing and the salaries of those who work in the Mary Walker Health Center. The center receives an additional sum of roughly $50,000 from New York State and students provide the rest of the center’s annual budget of around $2 million per year, according to Furlong.

Furlong said though some students do not use the health center as much as others, it is a crucial service to provide.

“You may never go to the health center all year,” Furlong said. “You may never need counseling services; you may never get sick. You may just never utilize that availability, but it’s there for you and the choice was yours to or to not use it.”

Students will also see an athletic fee of $214 on their bill each semester. This is the highest mandatory fee. Furlong said a lot of students feel they should not have to pay an athletic fee because they do not take part in an athletic team on campus.

“That’s the one that most kids are like, ‘Why do I have to pay that?’” Furlong said. This fee goes toward funding the 24 competitive athletic teams at Oswego State, including supplies, transportation, paying coaches, hosting events and facilities.

“There’s great pride in having a number of athletic teams on this campus,” Furlong said. “That brings the student service aspect sort of full circle.”

The athletic department receives approximately an additional $5,000 of funding from New York State and the rest of their budget is provided by student fees.

Students pay a student activity fee of $111 per semester. This funds Student Association (SA) and the clubs they sponsor. The revenue also goes to the Centro routes that go into Oswego and Syracuse, OzFest, hockey tickets for students and other services for students.

“By funding the main source of extracurricular involvement for students, we are enhancing the college and learning experience,” said SA president Emily Nassir.

Nassir said the senate votes to raise the fee when they feel it is necessary. This fee has been raised twice over the last two years, from $97 to the current $111.

Every two years, the whole campus votes on whether to make the student activity fee voluntary for students. SA is able to receive donations, but Nassir said they “typically don’t receive much in donations,” so most of SA’s funding comes from the mandatory student fee.

Students still have to pay for some activities and tickets to events because the SA fee does not fully cover all the services offered by SA.

“The truth is that the demand for more will always be beyond what we have,” Nassir said. “So we ask that students contribute to make these experiences possible.”  

The other mandatory fees students are billed for is a technology fee of $205 each semester and a transportation fee of $25. The technology fee is “solely spent on upgrading, providing and serving the needs of our students,” Furlong said. It helps update software, improve labs and add wireless access points. The transportation fee, which was not billed to students until 2014, provides funding for the intercampus bus loop.

There are additional fees each semester that students are automatically billed for, but they have the option to opt out. One of these is the alumni fee, which is only charged in the fall. This fee goes toward alumni programs that benefit students such as homecoming, the Future Alumni Network (FANs) and the Alumni Sharing Knowledge (ASK) program.

“This helps us take care of our students while they’re here, but also letting them know that these are the things we’re doing for you now so when you do become an alumni, there’s additional benefits,” Furlong said.

  Furlong advised that students contribute to the alumni fee with their $25 each fall semester.

“If you’re a very active student, the alumni fee is really a great benefit,” Furlong said. “The more students that participate in it, the more they can do for the current student body.”

In the spring semester, the alumni fee is replaced with a $25 arts fee that goes to ARTSwego and helps fund gallery exhibitions, plays, visiting artists, film screenings and performances.

Each semester, students are charged $5 for sustainability, a fee they can choose to opt out of. This money helps increase sustainability across the campus through education and initiatives such as the water bottle fountains being installed on campus.

“This gives students an opportunity to be a part of that, to contribute to that, to be a part of what it means to be a green campus,” Furlong said.

Hite said he chose to opt out of the alumni and arts fees, but he paid the sustainability fee because he is “environmentally-minded.”

Asia Godzwon, an Oswego State graduate student, was only required to pay the technology, sustainability and college fees since she does not take classes on campus during the day. When she needs to go to the health center, Godzwon pays for it out of pocket.

Last year, when she took her classes online, Godzwon said she was more reluctant to pay mandatory fees because she felt she received fewer benefits from the school.

“It’s like they’re getting free money from me,” Godzwon said. She believes certain fees should be optional if a student lives a certain number of miles away from campus.

Every year, each of these departments submits an annual budget of their needs. Furlong said her office assesses whether the fee students are currently charged is enough to cover any increase in costs among the departments and whether the fee will be increased. This decision is usually made early in the spring semester.

  The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) is an index that determines how much the cost of these fees can be raised each year. This helps regulate the inflation of fees.

There have been increases in the cost of broad-based fees in some of the main categories over the past five years. The health fee increased $14 from $164 in the 2012-2013 academic year. In the same time period, the athletic fee was raised $23.50 from $190.50. The technology fee increased $33.50 from $171.50.

Hite said he believes it is important for students to be informed about what services they are paying for.

“I was adamant about not paying for something blindly,” Hite said. “If I got a bill from a restaurant at the end of the meal and it said ‘athletic fee’ at the bottom, I wouldn’t just pay for it without asking about it.”