By Dylan Hart
The university plans to raise local fees for new students at USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota-Manatee when consolidation takes effect on July 1.
But the change will only impact students who enroll after July 1, 2020.
Local fees are a portion of students’ tuition, billed per credit hour. The fees break down into three types: the Activities and Services fee, which goes toward student organizations on campus; the health fee and the athletic fee.
Right now, students at USF St. Petersburg pay $32.98 per credit hour in local fees. Students at USF Sarasota-Manatee pay $28.45. In the consolidated model, students from all three campuses will pay the same $36.48 fee as students at USF Tampa.
Nicholas Setteducato, regional vice chancellor of administrative and financial services, told Student Government senators at an Oct. 28 general assembly meeting that the new fee structure will only apply to new students or those who “stop out” and need to re-enroll.
“It’s not an increase in any one individual fee,” Setteducato said. “It’s an increase to all of the local fees in total. Therefore, we have the ability on both Sarasota and St. Petersburg to utilize that increment where it’s needed on those campuses.”
The plan comes from a desire to “level out” the local fee structure to meet that of the “pre-eminent campus, which is Tampa,” Setteducato said.
“Although the price will be going up in total, what I want to stress is that you’re not being told how to spend,” he said.
The plan to decide how to spend that money is to reestablish the campus’ local fees committee. In the past, Setteducato said, the campus had a local fees committee, but government restrictions have prevented the university from raising student fees.
“The reason why (the local fees committee is) out of practice is, for many years now, the universities in the state of Florida have been pretty much prohibited from increasing any fees whatsoever,” he said, referring to the state government’s desire to keep student financial burdens low.
The members of the local fees committee are appointed by the regional chancellor and will constitute a joint membership of students, faculty and administration.
The local fees committee will decide how the local fees break down — that is, how much of students’ local fees will go to Activities and Services, health and athletics.
Setteducato also told senators that there is no plan to change the Green Energy fee, which funds environmental initiatives on the St. Petersburg and Tampa campuses, respectively, via the Student Green Energy Fund. Students pay $1 per credit hour for the fee.
Setteducato said that consolidation may also bring an “oversight committee” for each campus’ local fee committee. The oversight committee would be a university body with representatives from each campus who will “provide oversight of all three campuses to ensure equity of services.”
“They just want to make sure that if there …are similar services that are being provided (on each campus), that everyone (has) access to it,” Setteducato said. “You shouldn’t have to wait longer here for a service just because you have less money here.
“The (oversight) committee is not going to prevent the local fee committee from setting how the money is spent, but they are going to look across all three campuses just to make sure that there’s always that check and balance for equity for the students.”
