Fee for a specific major
 

I was just wondering if anyone has this at there school.

First off the College of Engineering is trying to set a fee for all Engineering students. Either a flat rate of $100-$200 or by credit hour $6-$12. They want to add this fee to our students fee. They are calling a Lab/Equipment Fee. Does any other college or university have a fee like this?

I'm pretty sure UF had lab fees for science lab classes. And USF and FSU have extra fees for online/distance learning classes.

But it seems to me what they are trying to accomplish in your school is to weed out unmotivated students from that major. At UF that was done by requiring higher GPAs (and sometimes letters of purpose) for the more popular majors.

I know Illinois had the fees. My cousin majors in art, and I know she has additional studio/material fees. My friends in engineering would gripe about theirs as well. I know there was a materials fee for my Art Ed class.

For my master's degree, I am paying two fees to the College of Education....and both are related to technology/computer labs.

I have heard of lab fees or studio fees, which are legit if you actually do a lot of work in the lab/studio. But by the OP's tone, I'm guessing that's not the case?

Extra fees should NEVER be used to "weed out" students and I'm guessing that any college that participated in that would be in major trouble if the practice was publicized.

I'm an education major, and we have to buy insurance (which I'm not complaining about), and a $100 account for this online portfolio thing. And tuition at my school is EXPENSIVE, so most freshmen are pretty angry when they find out they have to pay these fees too.

The thing that is happening is that for the first time they want to put these fees. I agree that the fee would do good for students and for the labs but one of the draw backs is that included in the fee the College of Engineering want to hire tow techs. From my understanding, since I am at a Land Grant University, is that student fees should not be used to pay for staff members. The College also does not know how they are going to control the money or even how they are going to split it. I'm on the Engineers Council and the Dean came to talk to us to see how we felt. From what I understood that they want to do is set up a separte council that will be made up of students from engineering and faculty to deciede where the money is needed most.

There are classes in which you have to pay a separte lab fee. But a fee for every student. Even if they have a class that do not have a lab.

That definitely sounds shady.

I took a class about finances in higher ed last semester. Since state schools often have limits on the amount they can charge for tuition, fees are often charged to help provide for things like technology or student programs (pretty much anything not directly related to regular classes). Many universities have student center fees that are controlled by a student/staff council to pay for needs in the center each year. I am not sure what the rules are re: paying staff--but I think I have read where student fees were used to pay for staff before. That said, its possible the fees could be used to support programs and the university would then pay for the staff from other funds.

At my undergrad (Univ. of Minnesota) all students in the Institute of Technology (our engineering/physical science college) must pay a technology fee. This includes fees for all lab courses, and also supports our computer labs. We have separate computer labs with UNIX stations that only students in our college could use.

I thought all schools worth their weight in the sciences already had these fees.

Anyone at my undergrad who took any sort of music class had a $10 fee for school instrument maintenance/new music purchase, etc..