The Bowling Green State University Board of Trustees Friday (May 15) will be asked to waive student fees for summer as well as the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters.
The fee for summer will be cut by 50 percent. That fee reduction would remain in place through Spring 2021 if students do not return to campus and instruction is provided in a fully remote manner.
If students return to campus and are instructed in the hybrid manner with some face-to-face instruction and some online instruction 25 percent of the fee would be waived .
President Rodney Rogers has said that the university is planning for students to return to campus and receive hybrid learning.
Continuing undergraduates on the Bowling Green campus pay $762 for a full-time student or $63.50 per student credit hour as a general fee.
The university estimates that the 50-percent general fee tuition fee waiver would cost approximately $1 million for the summer 2020 semester; $5.9 million if it were extended through the fall 2020 semester; and $5.5 million cost more if extended into spring 2021.
The fee supports student and student-service related uses and activities including inter-collegiate athletics, the Student Rec Center, the Bowen Thompson Student Union, student organizations and activities in addition to the debt service, insurance, campus technology, and other facility costs associated with the general fee supported auxiliaries.
That latter group of expenses must still be paid by the university regardless of whether students are on campus. However, the expectation is that many student activities will not be offered in the same manner, or at all, even if students return to campus under a COVID-19 resistant regime.
According to board materials: “The waiver would cease automatically at the conclusion of spring semester 2021; any extension would require a future Board of Trustees’ authorization for a subsequent period and fiscal year.”
