New fee required for all graduate students

Southeast Missouri State University introduced a zero-credit course with a $50 class fee this fall for all graduate students to take every semester they are at the university.

The class, GR 609, was designed to replace three previously offered classes, GR 698, GR 699 and GR 799. Before this fall, each graduate student would have to take one of those classes during their last semester.

“When we implemented GR 609, starting this fall, the fees that were associated with GR 698, GR 699 and GR 799 were eliminated,” Dean of Graduate Studies Charles McAllister said. “That could have been up to the equivalent of one credit hour of tuition, depending on the circumstances that the graduate students needed to be involved in those courses.”

Those three eliminated courses were capstones for the school of graduate studies, where students could get credit for defending their thesis, taking the required comprehensive exam or other specialist degree requirements for graduation. While the classes could cost the same as one credit hour, if the graduate student was enrolled in any other courses that semester, there was no fee.

According to the Board of Regents motion that was approved last May, one of the reasons the old classes didn’t work was because there were students who took one of the classes, but weren’t ready to complete their thesis or coursework and dropped the class. The motion said there was “significant staff processing time” and “unnecessary confusion” when the student tuition was applied and then removed from the student’s account.

According to enrollment data prepared by the Office of Institutional Research on Oct. 1, during the Spring 2015 semester, there were 241 students enrolled in one of the three eliminated courses. Out of those 241 students enrolled, only 39 were not enrolled in other courses, meaning they had to pay the course fee. Out of those 39 students, only seven dropped the course, leaving the university to reimburse those students.

The Board of Regents motion also said implementing the special course fee for GR 609 was estimated to increase revenue of $67,000 per fiscal year. The motion also said another reason the university added the course was to be able to track graduate student enrollment.

Dr. Diane Wood and Dr. Dustin Siegel in the biology department conducted a survey where seven department of biology chairs from similar universities in the region responded with how their university handles “tracking” courses for graduate students not enrolled in any other classes.

“We didn’t realize this was all going on, and then right before the semester started, a couple of our graduate students came to talk to us and was like ‘What is going on? Why am I having to pay this fee?’” Wood said.

In their study, including Missouri State University, Northwest Missouri State University and Truman State University, only one of the seven had a course that graduate students have to take every semester. At Southeastern Louisiana University, graduate students are required to be enrolled in at least one thesis hour for every semester they are in the program.

The study found that although Southeast’s GR 609 course is rare, the idea of a tracking course for students who are not taking other classes that semester was fairly common. At Missouri State University, students who wish to retain their email, library services, access to computer services and parking can enroll in a zero-credit course with a $75 fee. At Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville, there is a similar no-credit course with a $37.50 fee.

“The idea behind a tracking is extremely important for the university as a business, and I don’t have a problem with this,” Wood said. “We get a certain amount of money from the state, and I think it’s all contingent upon our enrollment. We want to keep our numbers up, and ideally we would like to increase our enrollment. So when a graduate student is not enrolled in a class, say they take a semester off, we can't count them.”

Wood said her reservations to the course started when it was applied to all students, not just those not enrolled in other courses. She added that the course makes sense for just those students not enrolled in other courses because it allows those students to have access to university resources. Wood later presented her findings to the faculty senate and has spoken to university President Carlos Vargas about GR 609.

McAllister said the course was established to “encourage timely degree completion and permit the university to better account for graduate enrollment.” He said that for students not taking other courses, GR 609 would give them access to their Southeast email, library databases and continued conversations with their faculty advisers. He added that those meetings with faculty were a main reason the course was beneficial to students taking other courses that semester.

“It’s about faculty mentoring students so that they don’t get to the end of their program and look around and say ‘Oh, I have a thesis to write. I haven’t thought of that before this point,’ and be late,” McAllister said. “So i guess ultimately, it’s an encouragement for students to progress toward degree completion, and we want to try to keep them on track or help them remain on track for graduation.”

McAllister said the course will allow first-year graduate students to look toward their graduation early.

“For the brand new graduate student who has to enroll in GR 609, it is encouragement for them to engage their faculty adviser in a conversation about their thesis that they have to complete by the time they graduate and how to plan for that,” McAllister said.

Wood said there are no costs for the university in regard to graduate faculty advisers, so the idea that the fee is going to paying for that student benefit is false.

“Not all departments have a graduate program,” Wood said. “But for those departments that do, if [faculty members] wish to participate in the graduate program, you have to apply for graduate faculty status. And as a graduate faculty member, you can have graduate students. We do projects together and we do all of that. The problem is that some of us are graduate faculty and some of us are not, yet we have the same teaching load. So anything we do with regard to having graduate students, being on graduate committees or any of that is gratis, that’s free. So there is no cost [for the university] in regard to meeting with graduate faculty.”

Wood added that the reason she became a graduate faculty member was because her graduate advisers saw something in her and gave her the confidence to get her master’s and Ph.D. Wood said she feels like it is her responsibility to pay it forward, and she thinks that is why others do so as well despite not getting extra compensation for that work.

“Some of the fees that both undergraduate and graduate students pay goes to library services, they already do that,” Wood said. “Then all of a sudden they are saying that, ‘Well, it will cover the cost for the use of the library databases,’ which only makes sense for students who aren’t enrolled in other courses.”

Wood said the same situation applies to the use of Southeast email, where student fees have been said to cover that unless you are not paying tuition for any other courses.

“[The fee] was not designed to be punitive,” McAllister said. “It was not designed to be a revenue generating opportunity for the university. I think there were two purposes. The fee that was previously associated with GR 698, GR 699 and GR 799 was eliminated, so on one hand we could think of GR 609 as paying a little bit along the way rather than having a larger fee at the end of the program. We can also think about the student who is not enrolled in any other courses as providing some sort of mechanism to offset library resources, student email and contact with faculty. So the institution bears some of those costs that are being offset through the GR 609 fee.”

McAllister said the course was given support by the Graduate Council on March 26, with the Board of Regents officially approving the change on May 8. He added that the course went through the normal curriculum review process like all other courses.

Wood added that there is currently no graduate student council, and that the Graduate Council is mostly made up of faculty members.

“The graduate students had no voice,” Wood said. “They were never informed when these decisions were beginning to be made. There was only one graduate student on Graduate Council, and the information [from Graduate Council] isn’t distributed to the graduate students on this campus. They weren’t able to come to those meetings and Graduate Council didn’t invite any graduate students to come and speak about this before making that decision.”

Wood said her solution would be to have the classes go back to only having to be taken during graduate students’ last semester, and that tuition for the class would go back to being waived if the student is taking other classes that semester.

“They have said that there is a problem with these people dropping and them having to be reimbursed, so here’s an easy fix for that,” Wood said. “Their advisers have to sign off on that course in order for them to enroll in it. So if they are not ready, then they can’t enroll. That’s how simple that is. Now if they are wanting to make money and if you want to put a fee on the graduate students, then tell the truth about that. Don’t mislead.”