New Web site breaks down tuition bills
The Web site will help students see where their money is going.
May 9, 2008
A new Web site put together by students and administrators will help students keep track of where all the money has gone.
The Web site, found at budget.missouri.edu/tuitioninformation.php, breaks down the history of tuition, funding levels, the role of state support and financial aid.
It also offers spreadsheets that further break down tuition and supplemental fees by academic college or school.
Missouri Students Association Department of Student Services Director Jordan Paul said he and Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays noticed the difficulty of gathering tuition information when they were trying to determine the impact of an omnibus higher education bill on MU.
“We were talking to so many people to get the full picture,” he said. “Students shouldn’t have to go through all this.”
Paul cited residence hall fees, dining plan fees and course fees as charges that might not be obvious on a bill.
“You get a lump sum in the mail, that you owe ‘X’ amount of dollars to the university,” he said. “Only part of that is tuition.”
Paul wrote the original version of the text on the Web site using information from the MU Budget Office, which was then edited and approved by Budget Director Tim Rooney.
Paul and Rooney have worked together on the Web site since late last semester, Paul said.
Rooney referred questions to the MU News Bureau.
Although Paul finished the text of the Web site in February, he said, the Web site did not go online until late April.
MU spokesman Christian Basi said the delay was due to the editing and fact-checking process information goes through before it goes online.
“There’s always a fact-checking process and a revision process that those kinds of things go through,” he said. “We do not want to have any inaccuracies on the Web site. It’s just part of the process.”
Paul said he requested that the Budget Office host the Web site, since the MSA Web site is unreliable and until recently, outdated.
Paul said the Web site helps promote transparency and eliminate confusion about which portions of tuition bills are tuition and which parts are actually fees, and that he hopes to develop the Web site further to include the history of tuition relation and more information about an omnibus higher education bill passed last year that put restrictions tuition increases.
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