Pay, pay and pay.

It’s what college students might feel like they’re always doing, and for some, the reality is they are.

Higher education is expensive, and on top of the baseline pay, student fees come into play.

What student fees, how much are students paying and for what?

It’s important to define what a student fee really is, Marshall CFO Matt Tidd said.

“Students pay several different fees,” Tidd said. “There’s a capital fee, there’s what we call a special auxiliary fee, which goes to the rec center, and then there’s what we call an auxiliary fee.”

System E&G Capital fees are paid by all students, Tidd said, and fund the maintenance and improvements for campus buildings. 

“This goes to our buildings all across campus,” he said. “They’re older, and they need a lot of work.”

The fee is $245 per student.

“Then you see $256,” Tidd said. “Each student pays that for the Rec Center. It comes into the university through our students, and those dollars go right back out to help pay for the operations of the rec.”

Every undergraduate pays $493, and Tidd said people ask him about this fee often. 

“So 2% of that fee goes to the Marshall Artist Series,” he said. “All around campus, students can attend those events.”

The rest, Tidd said, is broken up among public transportation, the Memorial Student Center, athletics and institutional services.

Students voted about a decade ago, Tidd said, to have the public transportation fee.

“The fee helps us raise $280,000 to pay for it,” Tidd said.

The money used for Tri-State Transit Authority, Tidd said, may soon be put toward something else.

“We want to try to talk to the student body as much as we can about who’s using it and how it would impact you if we don’t have it, the TTA,” he said. “Now, people are going in a different direction.” 

Some money may be left to fund student passes for public transportation, but the remainder could fund an investment in better campus Wi-Fi, he said.

“Wi-Fi’s a bigger deal now and a bigger issue than public transportation when you have Uber and other things available pretty readily,” he said.

“We increased resident tuition only by 2.5%,” he said. “That is well below any inflationary factors that are happening economically in the world right now.”

Within the Sun Belt Conference, Tidd said, Marshall has the lowest tuition of $8,370.

Is it worth it? Tidd said the financial benefits of attending Marshall outweigh other Sun Belt universities.

“Our graduates from Marshall report somewhere around $48,000 or so in earnings for a salary,” he said. “You’re already getting that return on investment.”

Holly Belmont can be contacted at [email protected].