What the Hell Are ‘Student Success Fees’? (Or: How to Raise Tuition Without Raising Tuition)

California instituted a tuition
freeze in 2012 for its state university system. Instead the
University of California and the California State University
systems each got millions in additional funding from the state. But
if there’s anything that can be learned about the intricacies of
public funding methods in California it is that there are these
magical creatures called “fees” that will let government agencies
or publicly funded institutions work around any restrictions on
raising things like taxes and tuitions. Just call something a “fee”
and you can apply it to anything. It’s like duct tape for
budgets.

So many California colleges instituted something called
“Student
Success Fees.” What are these for? As the Sacramento
Bee
explains, “The millions in additional funds have paid for
hiring faculty, adding course sections and technology upgrades.”
That’s what tuition is for, isn’t it? So the colleges got
additional funding increases from the state and increased
tuition anyway, despite the freeze. They just called it a “fee.”
Now that’s an education for California college students
they can use.

The “fees” have started causing problems, because of course, it
turns out they often have little to do with “student success,”
(whatever that even means):

Sonoma State tabled plans for a new success fee in February
after students circulated petitions threatening to withhold future
donations to the school. San Jose State students staged a walkout
in April when a budget review revealed that nearly 40 percent of
success fee revenue went to athletics, leading the university to
lower its fee by $40 for next year, rather than hiking it by $160
as originally planned.

The legislature is considering forcing a one-year moratorium on
raising or implementing new fees of this kind, in exchange for
giving the college system even more money. As is typical in college
budget reporting, there is no discussion of the
massive administrative bloat that is causing college prices to
skyrocket and to institute “fees” for the things tuition is
supposed to be covering in the first place.

The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU
professors, also wants the moratorium, but not for reasons that we
might hope:

Lillian Taiz, a professor of history at CSU Los Angeles and
president of the California Faculty Association, which represents
CSU professors, said the faculty is strongly opposed to student
success fees.

“This is transferring the responsibility of funding higher ed
from all of us together to individuals,” she said. It’s the “very
worst thing you can possibly do.”

Declaring that the individuals going to college being
responsible to pay for going to college is the “worst thing you can
possibly do”? Suddenly I feel an urge to support the fees after
all. If the costs were more adequately borne by the consumers
directly and not subsidized by hundreds of millions from the state,
colleges probably wouldn’t be able to charge so much and would have
to maybe scale back on that administrative bloat in order to keep
their students. Student debt is already well out of hand. As it is,
students are
more and more considering the costs when deciding which college
to attend.