BATON ROUGE, La.— Southern University System students in Louisiana will pay hundreds of dollars more a semester in the upcoming school year, to generate $4.2 million for campuses, under a package of fee hikes approved by the system governing board Thursday.
Fee increases on students are rankling lawmakers, who protected Louisiana’s colleges from budget cuts for the 2018-19 school year by renewing part of an expiring sales tax last month. The LSU System Board of Supervisors also voted last week to boost its student fees, to raise more than $14 million.
Baton Rouge Rep. Ted James, a Democrat and Southern University graduate, said lawmakers who supported the tax didn’t expect universities to still raise costs on students. He called it troubling.
“It pains me that we are having this less than three weeks after we voted” on taxes to spare colleges from cuts, James told the Southern board.
Southern University President-Chancellor Ray Belton said campuses lost millions in state financing over the last decade, even as mandated costs for health care, retirement and insurance continue to grow. Though Gov. John Bel Edwards and lawmakers haven’t cut state spending on higher education for the most recent two years, Belton said campuses are struggling.
“For the last few years, we’ve literally been in a survival mode,” Belton said. “These standstill budgets do not hold us whole.”
The fees are growing by 5 percent, with Thursday’s vote.
