Bradley Campbell
The Corsair
Where exactly does our money go? You know, the thousands upon thousands of dollars that are paid by students every semester to attend college at Pensacola State.
James Chappell, a Spanish major at Pensacola State said, “I believe the majority of it goes towards clubs and organizations to help better the school environment and then the rest of it goes towards the staff. Possibly incentives, possibly bonuses.”
“I believe it’s dispersed into several funds, as far as maintenance of the school, salaries, benefits, just upkeep utilities,” Rebecca Mills, business administration student at Pensacola State said.
Chappell and Mills are not far off of the mark with their estimations of how the school uses our tuition money.
Gean Ann Emond, Vice President of Business Affairs, comprehensively breaks down exactly where our tuition money goes.
The general tuition fee that students pay every semester is used to pay for a lot of the things one would expect it to be used for. “ The dollars, they go into the operating fund,” Emond said.
“They are going to support just the general operations of the college. That’s going to pay your instructors salary, your adjunct instructors’ salary, it’s going to pay for the electricity, the utilities of the school, it will pay for the administration, registration and all those kinds of things.”
The list of charges that students see on their inventory of fees starts with a student financial aid fee.
“Student financial aid fees are put in the scholarship fund and then scholarships are awarded to students out of those dollars,” Emond said.
Other things students have grown accustomed to seeing on their schedules are student activity fees and capital improvement fees.
Emond said, “Student activity fees are also in a restricted fund and they go to support all the activities you see for students around the campus.”
“Capital improvement fees go in the unexpended plant fund and they have to be spent on student buildings. We could spend it on building or equipment improvements in the Student Center. Any building that is considered a student building we can use that money for,” Emond said.
The last fee that students have to pay in order to attend Pensacola State is a technology fee. Gean Ann breaks that down for us as well.
“That’s also restricted for technology items for students. We have a bunch of computer labs and things. We are not putting a computer even on a teacher’s desk. It’s not just computers, it could be other kinds of technology also, but it has to be student related, for the student, not anybody else,” Emond said.
We may not agree with all of the fees that we must pay in order to receive a higher education, but they do serve a purpose, and with tuition prices rising across the nation, we may have to dig even further into our pockets in order to attend college in the near future.