College of Fine Arts students are paying extra in unexpected fees for fall 2010 classes.
Jim Linnell, dean of CFA, said students enrolled in almost any class in the college will have to pay an extra $5 per credit hour in fees.
He said students were not notified of the increase until after they had registered for classes.
“We weren’t given the approval for us to proceed with fees until the very last minute,” Linnell said.
He also sent an e-mail to all CFA students April 30 notifying them of the fee increase and the possibility that all students in the college would be dropped and need to re-register as a result.
“To ensure that all students are fully aware of the new fee structure and to accept this financial responsibility, all courses in the College of Fine Arts (Art Studio, Art History, Dance, Fine Arts, Media Arts, Music, Music Education and Theater) have to be canceled and rescheduled,” Linnell said in the e-mail.
The reason that the extra fees weren’t implemented until after registration was because the University’s budget wasn’t approved until the April 29 regents meeting. He said departmental fee increases must be approved through the Provost’s office, which wanted to make sure the campus-wide tuition and fee increase, as well as a departmental fee increase, wouldn’t be overwhelming for CFA students.
“The reason why it took so long is because of the way the University budget takes place,” he said. “It’s a long process and it didn’t complete until very recently.”
Linnell said the fees will be used to improve equipment and teaching spaces.
Terry Babbitt, associate vice president of Enrollment Management, said only a few CFA classes were canceled, not all of them.
“At the request of the College of Fine Arts, a small number of sections were canceled to accommodate a change in course fees,” Babbitt said in an e-mail. “We subsequently identified a better solution that would not require cancellation of sections.”
Babbitt said students enrolled in the canceled classes are already re-enrolled, and no other students will be dropped.
“For those enrolled in sections that were canceled, most are already re-registered in the new course,” he said. “We are reaching out to students who have not re-registered to ensure they have a seat in the class for which they originally enrolled.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Jamie Ho, an art studio major, said she was nervous when CFA planned to drop all students.
“I got really stressed when they said they wanted to drop all the classes,” she said. “I was expecting to see huge chaos if they dropped everyone at the same time, especially if you had seniority.”
Ho said the increase in fees isn’t a big problem, especially since it goes toward equipment. But she said the University should have notified students of the increase before registration.
“If they had decided on the fees earlier, then they wouldn’t have had to come up with these extra measures,” she said. “The increase doesn’t seem like that much so I don’t really have any problem with it.”
Wynn Goering, vice provost, said the reason all CFA students might have been dropped is due to the enrollment program software. He said it’s hard to add fees to a class in the program without creating an entirely new class section.
“The banner system thinks that’s a whole new class,” he said. “I’m told that they’ve found a way to work around that and that’s what they’re going to do.”
Linnell said students in CFA were most concerned about being dropped from classes but haven’t had any concerns about the fee increase yet.
“We know it’s a tough time for students to respond to any kind of increase,” he said. “At least among students we’ve talked to about this, they’re looking forward to seeing improvement in the teaching facilities.”
Linnell said the fee increase was necessary because of decreased departmental funding, the economic crisis and the decaying state of fine arts equipment.
“Besides the sciences, the arts have some of the most complicated, expensive teaching spaces on campus,” he said. “They’re very hard to keep maintained at the standard we believe is appropriate for our degrees. The only tool we had left to address that was fees.”
