UMass costs:

It's the fees that get you

The Lowell Sun

Article Launched:03/25/2007 06:36:43 AM EDT

http://www.lowellsun.com/

By Doreen Arcus

The Board of Higher Education voted last Wednesday to raise tuition and fees at the University of Massachusetts.

Tuition and fees. Say it fast and it can sound like one word: tuition-and-fees.

In fact, when calculating the cost of college attendance, the two are often thought of as a single unit. At private schools, fees pale in comparison to tuition. Merrimack College fees, for example, are less than 2 percent of tuition-and-fees, in part because fees ($450) are low but also because tuition ($26,620) is high.

At public colleges and universities, however, the differences are less striking because tuitions are lower, and fees, which typically stay on campus, are higher. This year's in-state tuition-and-fees for New England public flagship universities range from $7,464 at the University of Maine to $10,566 at the University of Vermont. Fees are 22 percent of the total on average.

Where does Massachusetts fall? Dead last.

The method that the Commonwealth uses to distribute funds in the public higher education system puts the entire burden for funding individual campuses, from capital improvements to hiring professors, on fees. This system results in a tuition-and-fees package comprised more of fees than that of any other state in the region or the nation.

Although UMass tuition has remained unchanged since 2000, the cost to students has soared because of fee increases. At the flagship Amherst campus, for example, annual fees of $7,881 are 82 percent of tuition-and-fees. UMass Lowell fees are $6,990 or 83 percent of the total. Far from the norm, these proportions are four times those in other states, including our New England neighbors.

Does it matter? It does if you are a Massachusetts high-school valedictorian.

It matters if your high MCAS scores earned a Stanley Z. Koplik award or a John and Abigail Adams Scholarship.

It matters if you are an aspiring educator, a new teacher in his or her first three years, or a veteran public-school teacher willing to mentor a student teacher from state colleges or universities.

It matters if you are the child of the custodians or secretaries in Massachusetts higher education.

It matters if you were formerly in foster care or were adopted through the Department of Social Services.

It matters if you are a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.

It matters if you lost a parent in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It matters to these individuals because they are eligible for tuition waivers through the state or through employee benefits, and, much to the surprise of many families making college decisions right now, that waiver does not include fees. "Free tuition" in Massachusetts is all too often a 20 percent proposition.

So who will pay the price for the latest tuition-and-fees increase? The burden falls disproportionately on our best and brightest, on students entering high demand fields, and on youths who have survived abuse and neglect, natural disasters and national tragedy.

It is time for an overhaul of the tuition and fee structure in Massachusetts public higher education. Other states that have multi-campus state university systems have found ways to fund their campuses without such inordinately high fees.

Illinois, for example, has nine public universities on 12 campuses and 45 community colleges. The current tuition-and-fees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is $10,062. A tuition waiver at UIUC covers 77 percent of that cost.

Massachusetts has one public university on five campuses, nine state colleges, and 15 community colleges. Yet families in Massachusetts who most need the assistance that tuition waivers provide get far less relief and face more than three times the cost of their Midwest neighbors to open the doors of the state university for their children.

What to do? Increasing the state's contribution to public higher education is the first step in decreasing the fee burden. Massachusetts spends only $143 per capita on higher education, far less than the national average of $233, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Overall costs are only part of the challenge. We must restructure tuition and fees to provide more families access to a system that has much to offer. We must work to keep the public in public higher education, not just for fairness and equity, but for the social and economic future of the Commonwealth.

Doreen Arcus, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology and director of Honors Program with the University of Massachusetts Lowell.