Published: November 17, 2009 11:14 pm      

DSC students face fee increase

Students at Dalton State College will pay an extra $50 fee starting in the spring semester to help cover funding cuts to the college.

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents unanimously passed the fee increase on Tuesday in an effort to make up $24 million of the $176 million reduction in state funding. The increase brings the total special institutional fee to $100 at DSC and other two-year and state colleges, $150 per semester at comprehensive colleges and $200 per semester at research universities.

DSC president John O. Schwenn said the fee increase will help the college pay for additional part-time faculty needed since student enrollment ballooned by 15 percent to 5,700 students this year.

“Unfortunately, it’s necessary,” Schwenn said. “We’ve taken so much and been cut so much ... we’re getting to where there’s not much else to cut.”

He said the institution and its employees took 86 percent of about $2.6 million in state cuts while students will, with the added fee, be asked to shoulder 14 percent. Total state funding is about $14 million.

The fee is set to end by June 2012.

Sophomore Amos Love, who works full time at a local grocery store, said he wishes the college would do more to inform students that fees could be increasing.

“They have no problems posting and sending e-mails to students saying ‘Hey, there’s Laser Day in June or (something else is going on),’” Love said.

Student body president Daniel Sanchez said he learned over the summer that a fee increase could happen depending on the state’s financial situation.

“The one good thing is that the money that’s collected from the mandatory fee stays at our school,” Sanchez said. “It doesn’t go back into the (university) system.”

Schwenn said students will be informed of the fee increase through the campus newspaper among other avenues, and he said the possible increase had been discussed several times on campus. Spring tuition and fees are due the second week in December.

According to background information posted on an agenda at the Board of Regents Web site, www.usg.edu/regents/meetings, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget asked state agencies to plan for an 8 percent budget reduction in 2010. They say a slowing economy and falling revenue collections are to blame.

According to the college’s Web site, www.daltonstate.edu, students already pay a $65 parking fee, a $4 per credit hour technology fee and a $3.33 per credit hour student activity fee.