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New tuition and fee rates for consolidation passed by BOT

The USF Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved a single rate of tuition and fees for students enrolled at USF in or after summer 2020. SPECIAL TO THE ORACLE

With less than a month to go before the university consolidates its three campuses — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee — into one accredited university, the Board of Trustees (BOT) approved Tuesday the alignment of tuition and fees for all USF students.

As a result of consolidation, the university will adopt a single rate of tuition and fees for all USF students, regardless of their home campus, effective in the fall. The change in rates will be applied to all students enrolled at USF in or after summer 2020.

Students enrolled at USF prior to summer 2020 will continue to pay tuition and fee rates that were originally set for the campus they were originally admitted to until they graduate.

That condition, however, will only be applied so long as the student maintains uninterrupted active enrollment and graduates no later than December 2023, according to USF Provost Ralph Wilcox.

“Under this proposed policy, no existing USF students will pay a higher rate of tuition and fees in fall 2020 than they paid last year, and no new freshmen, transfer students or graduate students will pay a higher rate of tuition or fees in fall 2020 than the rates paid by a comparable student admitted into the preeminence institution last year,” Wilcox said.

While most of the costs will remain unchanged, some fees will impact the amount undergraduate students pay, depending on their home campus.

The per-credit-hour rate is made up of tuition and fees, including differential, technology fee, green fee, nonresident and student financial aid fee.

For undergraduate students, tuition will remain the same as previous years, with a cost of $105.07 per credit hour. 

On top of tuition, students will be charged a tuition differential of $46.88 per credit hour, which is a supplemental fee charged to undergraduate students, providing additional funding specific to research universities. A technology fee of $5.25 will also be applied to students regardless of their residential status.

For nonresidential students, an out-of-state fee of $346.50 per credit hour will be applied to their tuition costs. In addition, they will also be charged a student financial aid fee of $22.57 per credit hour, compared to $5.25 for in-state students. 

The green energy fee, allocated toward the use of renewable energy technologies or energy efficiencies, will have the same $1 per-credit-hour cost as years prior. 

The transportation access fee, however, will slightly change.

Before consolidation, the transportation access fee was different based on a student’s home campus. While students from the Sarasota-Manatee campus were not charged this fee, students from the Tampa campus paid $3 and St. Pete students paid $2.25 per credit hour.

Now, all students will pay a transportation access fee of $3 per credit hour to support the USF system’s transportation infrastructure.

The same case will be applied to the local fees, which are made up of the Activity and Service (A&S), Health and Athletic fees.

Before consolidation, Tampa students were charged $36.48 per credit hour in local fees while St. Pete and Sarasota-Manatee were charged $32.98 and $28.45, respectively.

With consolidation, students from all three campuses will pay $36.48 per credit hour in local fees.

While some fees apply to all students, others don’t.

The Marshall Center Use fee of $1.50 per credit hour will only be applied to Tampa students to fund the Marshall Student Center (MSC) operations. The $20 flat fee for use and operation of the MSC will also only be applied to students from the Tampa campus.

Assessed once per semester, flat fees are mandatory for all students, including those taking online or off-campus courses. 

The A&S flat fee will remain the same, with a cost of $7 per semester. The Athletic flat fee, however, will see a slight change.

While students from the Tampa campus were charged $10 per semester for the Athletic fee, in addition to the local fee, students from the St. Pete and Sarasota-Manatee were charged $5 per semester. 

Now, all students, regardless of their home campus, will pay the $10 Athletic flat fee.

For graduate students, tuition costs will vary while most fees will remain the same compared to undergraduate students. 

The tuition cost for grad students will remain the same at $347.91 per credit hour. For nonresident students, they will be subject to an out-of-state fee of $424.53 per credit hour.

For the student financial aid fee, resident grad students will pay $17.39 while nonresidents pay $38.61 per credit hour. The technology fee will be the same for both, with a cost of $17.39 per credit hour.

As the July 1 deadline approaches, the alignment of tuition and fees across all three campuses marks a significant step toward consolidating the three campuses.