This past year was the first in a while where higher education didn’t experience a funding cut from the state. Even though things are looking better for education, fees are rising. Some students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette say fees have gotten out of hand and need to be addressed.

“We have experienced cuts at least once every year and sometimes twice a year,” said Dr. Dewayne Bowie, the Vice President of Enrollment at UL. “As a result of that, we as an institution had to make decisions on how do we keep this enterprise moving forward and keep the doors open as is.”

Bowie said education is underfunded and the only way to raise tuition at a university is to go through the legislature.

 Students who are eligible for the TOPS gets their tuition covered. The state has stabilized TOPS for the next four years at its current level.

Dr. Bowie says the legislator is not as inclined to raise to tuition when TOPS is stabilized. “The other thing you do have access to is tuition and fees and so that is why we’ve seen those move over the last 10 years,” says Bowie. 

According to Bowie, schools like the University of New Orleans and Louisiana Tech are comparable to UL. Below are the costs from multiple universities in Louisiana for 12 credit hours in the Spring of 2019.  

In October, of the University of Louisiana System approved fee increases to raise about $9.3 million across its nine institutions. For a full-time student at UL Lafayette, that equals $225 more per semester. 

“We of course are not getting as much money as we need from the state of Louisiana,” Bowie said. “We have to find other ways to fund things like improvements on our campus and also advancement as far as trying to hire more faculty and administrators. Fees such as that help us to be able to add flexibility to do some of the things we need to do to keep progressing and moving the institution forward.” 

Bowie says when fees are increased, money is set aside for students who need the assistance. 
He says, “5 percent of that is set aside for need based grants. So then we are looking at those students who are Pell eligible because we have to have a gauge to be able to determine who is a needy student, the best gauge we have is those who actually apply for financial aid and are deemed eligible for the federal Pell Grant.”

Dr. Bowie also said fees including the cheerleader, band associations, and art museum fees were added by students to improve campus life.