Students support decreasing DoIT fees

Currently, decreasing fees would affect all four UM system campuses.

By Campbell Massie

Published April 6, 2009

Decreasing the student fees the Division of Information Technology receives will take more than a Student Fee Review Committee recommendation.

Student leaders from the Missouri Students Association and Graduate Professional Council, as well as student representative to the UM system Board of Curators Tony Luetkemeyer, would like to see the DoIT fee decoupled from the UM system level.

Student leaders called for the decrease of the DoIT fee after its unallocated budget for this fiscal year is estimated to be $1,006,825, which makes up 11.3 percent of its total funds. In fiscal year 2008, 18.5 percent of the total budget, $1,567,981, was originally unallocated with $750,000 going into a contingency fund.

When the SFRC met on Monday, March 16, the committee voted to keep the amount of student fees for DoIT the same.

The DoIT fee paid by students at MU yielded a carryover, but the SFRC cannot simply ask for the fee to be reduced because this particular fee is set on the system level, meaning an increase or decrease would affect all the universities in the UM system.

Another school in the UM system can ask for an increase in their DoIT, and because the fee is set at the system level, all affiliated universities will receive the increase they did not ask for as well, MSA President Jordan Paul said.

MU also has a greater carryover than other universities in the UM system due to its increased enrollment, Luetkemeyer said.

MSA Budget Committee Chairman Matt Sheppard said he would eventually like to see the fee decreased but said the fee must be decoupled from the UM system first, before anyone can start to look into how DoIT spends their student fees.

"I just don't see how anyone can justify a million dollar carryover," Sheppard said.

Sheppard said he would like to write an MSA resolution once it handles its budget.

The DoIT fee is the only supplemental fee set at the system level, Luetkemeyer said.

Luetkemeyer said the rollover is a prime example of why the fee should be decoupled.

"A million dollars in budget rollover is not a good thing," Luetkemeyer said.

Paul also said the carryover will be compelling in the argument to decouple the fee as the curators do not like to see carryover.

Luetkemeyer said he does not foresee any roadblocks in decoupling the IT fee which will most likely take place in a Board of Curators meeting in April 2010. He said the system is working toward individual autonomy of requirements by school anyway, including tuition, in the near future due to their different numbers of students and missions.

"It gives them the ability to budget based on their individual needs," Luetkemeyer said.

To deal with the budget carryover for this fiscal year before the Board of Curators can decouple the fee or student leaders can decrease it, a task force has been formed to give recommendations how the carryover should be spent.

"The goal of that task force is to prioritize investments that need to be made on campus," DoIT Desktop Technologies Director Kevin Bailey said.