CHICAGO, IL (March 19, 2009) -- In an effort to provide greater transparency and predictability for student costs, Columbia College has restructured mandatory course fees to better reflect resources and materials used, based on a survey of course requirements across the college’s arts, media and academic disciplines. The new Instructional Resource Fees (IRF) will be in place for the Fall 2009 term.
Prompted by student concerns – voiced by the Student Government Association – about the basis for the course fees, IRF are the result of an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of Columbia’s historic course fee structure and are designed to better reflect the varying levels of resources required for teaching various disciplines. While fees will still be assessed on a course-by-course basis, all courses in a given department will carry the same fee.
Academic departments have been divided into four tiers based on their relative levels of resource requirements. Courses in departments that use the fewest instructional resources (English; History, Humanities, Social Sciences; New Millennium Studies and Marketing Communications) will now have no instructional resources fees. Courses in the other three tiers—those that use increasingly greater levels of resources – will have $40, $70, and $115 fees respectively. Materials that contribute to the assessment of fees include such items as guest lectures, consumable materials (e.g., photo paper, chemicals), musical accompaniment, etc. There will be no instructional resources fee assessed for courses carrying one credit regardless of department. Courses carrying five or more credits will have fees double those of other courses in that department.
While the restructuring reflects a zero-based total (i.e., no additional revenue to the college from fees), there will now be no fee for approximately 35% of all courses. In addition, the maximum fee is now $230, as contrasted with the previous maximum of $415. The new structure reflects a more equitable distribution of fees across students and disciplines.
The college intends to hold the instructional resource fees at the current levels for the next three years. After that time, instructional expenditures will again be analyzed and fees may be reset. This should further help students predict upcoming costs.
The new fee amounts will be included in the course catalog and on the Student Financial Services website.
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