
DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997              TAG: 9710230492

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Education 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  124 lines

HIGHER EDUCATION COSTS ARE GOING HIGHER FEE INCREASES AT LOCAL SCHOOLS SURPASS STATE'S AVERAGE OF 6.6%.

A $40 million convocation center. A $15 million football stadium. A campus shuttle service. New furniture in the student union.

At Virginia colleges, students are paying significantly more in fees this year for activities and projects outside the classroom. Local universities had among the largest fee increases statewide.

Virginia has frozen tuition, which averages $2,655 a year at state-supported four-year schools for in-state students. Tuition helps cover classroom costs. But fees, which go mostly for extracurricular activities, rose 6.6 percent - from last year's $1,351 to $1,440. Over five years, they have risen nearly 30 percent. They make up more than one-third of the total tuition-and-fees cost required of in-state undergraduates.

Under Gordon K. Davies, the former director of the State Council of Higher Education, the agency did not clamp down on fees. Davies stops short of suggesting a fee freeze, but he says it's time the state considered a cap or strict guidelines to rein in the charges.

Schools ``are indebting students for the next 20 years, and they are doing it for facilities that support activities that are peripheral to the purpose of the university,'' said Davies, now the director of Virginia Wesleyan College's Center for the Study of Religious Freedom.

Yet some students say they're comfortable paying the extra fees for projects they want.

Norfolk State University junior Masomakali Robinson is glad the football team has its own stadium and doesn't have to play at Old Dominion University anymore. ``It gives us that school spirit,'' he said. ``You really feel it when you're at your own school, on your own grounds.''

At James Madison University, where the $2,258 annual fee total exceeds the cost of tuition, ``I have yet to have one student come to me and say, `I'm paying too much in fees at JMU,' '' said Steven Knickrehm, assistant vice president for resource planning. ``We give the services the students want and expect.

``We received 14,000 applications for 3,000 freshman slots this year,'' Knickrehm said. ``I think our students are voting with their applications.''

Among local universities, ODU's fees rose 10 percent, to $1,520. The main reason was to finance the the $40 million convocation center, to be finished in 2000, and the $15 million higher education center in Virginia Beach, to open in 1999.

The convocation center, seating 10,000, will hold concerts, lectures, men's and women's basketball games. ``We . . . do not have any facility on our campus to support those activities'' now, said David F. Harnage, vice president for administration and finance. The Beach center, to be operated with NSU, is aimed at providing education to residents of one of the largest Eastern cities without a public four-year school.

ODU also instituted a $44-a-year fee for a shuttle service, designed in part to encourage use of parking lots on the edges of campus. To counteract the increase, it cut the cost of parking decals by $44.

The transportation fee is mandatory; the parking cut affects only those students who park on campus. Josh Fannon, a junior who walks to school from his apartment on Powhatan Avenue, complains that he's paying for a service that won't benefit him. Harnage, however, said: ``As we see winter approach, I would think people would find that a convenient way to move around campus.''

Belinda Evans, a junior from Virginia Beach, said commuters like her are paying for activities in which they don't participate. ``I think there should be some type of fee reduction,'' she said. ``I have my own doctor, so I wouldn't go to the health center.''

But her friend Leon Gordon, a senior from South Carolina, was more philosophical: ``I guess it's supposed to be an all-for-one, one-for-all mentality. The health service is probably important to a lot of students. The fact is, a lot of them don't have a doctor.''

ODU President James V. Koch said the fee increases were supported by the Student Senate. And he noted that the total package, including tuition and room and board, went up only 2.6 percent this year.

At NSU, fees rose 12 percent, to $1,254, primarily to pay for the recently opened $15 million football stadium and for costs linked with the university's jump to Division I athletics.

``I don't know if I would have done that,'' said Marie V. McDemmond, who took over as president in July, ``but it's clearly needed because athletics is still running a deficit'' above $1 million.

McDemmond, like Koch, predicts that fee increases will level off next year.

William R. Miller III, rector of NSU's Board of Visitors, said: ``I voted for it because I was convinced that this was not going to be a trend . . ., and even after that increase we were significantly lower'' than other schools. In terms of combined tuition and fees, NSU remains lowest in the state, with a $3,000-a-year total.

Sitting outside the library, three students - Robinson and seniors Valerie Johnson and William Powell - expressed enthusiasm for the stadium and Division I competition, and no concern about fees. Powell said, ``Instead of having to go to other schools to watch the game, now they have to come to our school.''

Virginia Military Institute has both the highest fees statewide - $2,725 - and the biggest increase this year - $330. Why? About $820 of the total goes to military-related expenses, such as haircuts, uniforms and laundry service.

But most of the fees go for the standard student activities and athletics. VMI students pay more for each - $970 and $810, respectively - than undergraduates at any other state-supported school.

John L. Rowe Jr., VMI's business executive, said the size of the fees reflects VMI's tiny enrollment - 1,300 students. ``If you add $5 at Virginia Tech to a fee, that's a lot of money,'' said Rowe, a former Suffolk city manager. ``Five dollars doesn't bring in a lot of money here.'' Tech, with 27,000 students, has the state's biggest enrollment and smallest fee total - $647.

The fee increase, Rowe said, helps subsidize the ``Corps trip'' - an annual trip to a football game made by most cadets - new uniform requirements and new furniture in the student union. None of it goes for coeducation.

Norfolk lawyer John D. Padgett, a member of the State Council of Higher Education and chairman of its Resources Committee, said he plans to investigate the spiraling fees across the state. ``I don't like the idea that we have held down the cost of education (tuition) and then they have to pay for all these other expenses that are not core education costs.'' ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC

THE RISING COST OF STUDENT FEES

The Virginian-Pilot

SOURCE: State Council of Higher Education

HOW FEES ARE SPENT AT SOME LOCAL SCHOOLS

SOURCE: State Council of Higher Education, local colleges and

universities

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN

The Virginian-Pilot

Norfolk State University...