At the recommendation of the Registration Fee Committee, $300,000 in registration fees may be cut from the Intercollegiate Athletics program.
It makes perfect sense, of course. Thanks to the recent fee referendum, which will pump over $3 million of students’ money per year into UCSD’s athletics department, ICA will be sitting pretty for the near future – so that $300,000 is hardly necessary.
But don’t expect to see registration fees lowered anytime soon. The money cut from athletics will simply be redirected to other services.
From the perspective of a UC administrator, it’s not a bad system. How do you raise registration fees when educational fees are already through the roof? Such an increase would surely spark a political firefight, and cutting any student service in favor of another can’t be accomplished without a serious butting of heads.
Luckily, there’s a three-step way to get around this problem.
Step one: Find a cash-strapped service that students generally like (athletics, maybe) and refuse to support it. Step two: Wait for students to pass a fee increase to support that service. Step three: Redirect funds from the newly endowed service to the programs of your choice. Students get their athletics program – and UC administrators have effectively raised registration fees.
Athletics is an easy sell for the university. Most agree that a thriving athletics program improves school spirit and unites the campus; so when the program’s financial picture is painted as dire (half our teams will be cut!), students are willing to pitch in over $300 a year to save the department.
But for the athletics program, the “”dire circumstances”” have been around for a while. In 2001, UCSD Athletics Director Earl W. Edwards made the same predictions about losing teams – unless a new fee was passed. A general fee increase that year (which would have funded athletics) did not pass. But two years later, with the same arguments presented to the student body, a $28-per-quarter fee made it through. And five years after that, the most recent referendum was advertised with predictably similar arguments.
The same can be said of numerous other fees passed by students. In 1999, students rejected a university centers fee, only to pass a nearly identical one in 2001; and this year’s P.U.L.S.E. referendum looks surprisingly like the one we turned down in 2005.
That’s not to say that students shouldn’t be expected to pay for services they use. Registration fees pay for Student Health Services, the Career Services Center, Student Legal Services, Psychological and Counseling Services and a number of other services used primarily by undergraduates. That much is fair.
But student fees also pay for a number of things that benefit the school as a whole.
With the new P.U.L.S.E. referendum, undergraduates will pay for student outreach – a social responsibility, if anything – because both the state and school administration refuse to pay for it.
Student fees paid for RIMAC Arena, which can be enjoyed by all UCSD affiliates, and whose conference rooms and event spaces are used by a number of groups.
Undergraduate students will be the majority stakeholder in the UCSD athletics program – but will undergraduates be the only ones who benefit from increased alumni donations, additional national recognition and the myriad of revenues that come from sporting events? (Attendees at the UCSD-hosted NCAA women’s basketball tournament were showered with $40 parking tickets, for instance.)
Undergraduate students bought the Price Center expansion, which will contain spaces for students – and also a 15,000-square-foot addition for the UCSD Bookstore, 4,600 square feet for the Alumni Association, 1,000 square feet for administrative offices and brand-new meeting spaces for the entire campus.
Would students rally around a referendum to pay for new offices for administrators? Surely not. But by passing fee referenda with few questions asked, no promises of institutional support and precious little financial oversight, students are essentially doing exactly that.
Forget corporate donors. UCSD has found a great source for new money: the undergraduate student body. If undergrads won’t pay for services that benefit everyone, no bother: Just wait a few years and try again.
