Understanding college fees

Considering the points of view of the student and family (consumer) and the college, the fact is that the price of college and the cost of college are two different things. That’s a story for another day but for now I want to tackle one piece of the price of college - fees.

I started thinking about this as a topic to write about as I completed the annual right-of-passage that most of do each and every year - renew our vehicle’s registration. The $231 my wife and I paid to the state of Colorado included a myriad of different fees that are associated with the total registration price.

One way or another, fees will impact the price you will pay to attend college and the sheer number of fees can be mind-boggling. So let’s dive into it so you can be an educated consumer when it comes to understanding the Cost of Attendance and net price you will ultimately be held responsible for.

Aren’t fees just a part of tuition?

Many people may equate “tuition” with the total price you pay to a college but technically these are not the same. Tuition is defined as the amount of money charged in order to cover the cost of instruction and teaching. In fact, I was on a webinar earlier this week and the hosts brought up the recent news that Colby-Sawyer College is going to cut its tuition by 62% for 2023. Some attendees, who work in higher ed, didn’t know that this meant it was just tuition and not the overall cost of attendance, which is vastly different. Certainly It is a reduction of thousands of dollars but it is not the same as cutting the cost of attendance by 62%. In fact, if you explore the article in-depth you’ll find that Colby-Sawyer College is simply bringing their sticker price down to the level that most students actually pay.

Fees are separate from tuition and they can add up in a hurry. Here’s just a partial list of the types of fees you may encounter:

• Application fee

• Matriculation fee

• Orientation fee

• Green/Environmental fee

• Tech fee

• Transportation fee

• Transcript fee

• Athletic fee

• Housing fee

• Parking fee

• Graduation fee

• Course fees

• Other institutional or campus-wide mandatory fees

While some of these fees you can probably identify by the name, the course fees and other institutional fees are more nebulous and as you can guess, every institution has a different way of labeling and listing their fees. Let’s explore these a bit more and look at some examples.

I’ve seen the evolution of fees up close for two decades. I left the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 just as they were starting to implement a “differential tuition” for engineering students. Basically this means engineering students would pay a premium price in order to support the high level of technology and other resources needed to support the College of Engineering. These strategy has been implemented around the country. When I arrived at Fort Lewis College there were just a handful of course-specific fees for one department and today it has grown exponentially to cover most areas of campus.

Course-specific fees

Course-specific fees are charged directly to students for a given course. These fees may range from a handful of dollars to hundreds of dollars. As an example, Fort Lewis College lists that the course fee for Exercise Science 310: Exercise Testing & Prescription is $7.00 whereas the course fee for Adventure Education 331: Advanced Paddling is $200. (Find a complete list of course fees here.) Other schools are similar as you can see from the list of course fees at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Check the schools you are interested in and see what course fees may be associated with your interests because it will impact your final price.

Basically this means that students pay different prices for different majors at the same school and this isn’t built into tuition but is due to the rapid increase in course fees.

Institutional fees

This is a broad category and basically cover a wide swath of fees that may help pay for auxiliary departments at a college. Some schools charge institutional fees via a flat fee while other schools charge by the credit hour. Here’s an example from Fort Lewis College:

What this shows us is that every student pays $67.05 per credit hour to support the different fees listed in the table. So a student taking 12 credits will pay an additional $804.60 in fees while a student taking 15 credits will pay an additional $1005.75 in fees. This is for one semester.

To explore fees further for any schools which you have interest in, I suggest you search for “fees at <name of school>” or even get specific with “course fees at <name of school>”. Many schools post their fees via their financial aid page so that is also a good place to start.