(02-09-2018 08:28 AM)SpaceRaider Wrote:  In Texas, do these student votes have any legitimate authority or are they just opinion polls? IIRC, in some instances where these student votes have occurred, the universities have ignored the results and gone ahead with the fees.

yes they carry some weight

the laws have changed recently and they go more on a "per university basis" now as to what fees can be charged and the amount of those fees

in that case the laws are generally written where there is an allowed increase over and above the existing fees and then to raise it beyond that there is a mandatory student vote

the administration CAN ignore a POSITIVE vote for a student athletics fee increase, but they cannot ignore a no vote and raise the fees anyway above the currently legally allowed amount

different schools have different dollar amounts that can be charged, some have restrictions on the number of credit hours it can be applied to (12 or 15 or as many as the student takes) and most all that have a set legal limit also have a limit as to what it can be raised without a student vote

the reality is though there is really nothing that prevents the administration from still taking other money (as long as it is not state funded dollars) and applying that to athletics and that happens regularly and I would imagine if enough of these student votes start getting pushed people will discover that and there will be harder caps put in place and there will be no opportunity to shift other funding (generally from regular tuition) over to athletics

this can be demonstrated with UTSA

currently UTSA has a $20 dollar an hour cap with that being charged to a max of 12 credit hours

in 2014 UTSA had $12,158,968 in student fees and $2,651,967 in "school funds" (I used 2014 because it was the easiest available data)

in Fall of 2014 they had 311,670 FTE credit hours taken....now generally a Full Time Equivalent Undergrad is considered 15 hours scheduled but since there are part time students and there are many students that do not take a full 15 hours they only take 12 those credit hours come pretty close to the amount that would be charged the $20 per credit hour

so 311,670 undergrad credit hours X $20 = $6,233,400 for the fall semester now most places the Spring enrollment is slightly less, but there is also summer enrollment to count as well so if you double that $6.2 million you get right at the reported $12 million and change in reported student athletics fee dollars.....so where does the other $2.6 million come from.....well it would be illegal to take it from state funding or grants so it is just a general transfer of other tuition dollars to athletics outside of the student fees.....and to be clear it is not "donations" because those are in their own category

this is common at most Texas public universities with the exception of UT Austin that has no mandatory student fee and no other university funds (and athletics actually sends $10 million TO academics) and sometimes A&M does not have a transfer

(02-09-2018 10:00 AM)AustinFromUNT Wrote:  In Texas, the student athletics fee can be raised by $1 1 time without a vote. After that the student body must vote for further raises. After each raise though, the 1 time $1 resets.

this is 100% false especially in the case of north Texas state and in the case of several other universities as well

in the case of north Texas state they are allowed to raise the fee a SINGLE TIME for an amount equal to 10% of what the existing fee was at the time (it was $10 dollars) so north Texas state could raise the fee one time and ONE TIME ONLY for one dollar and that is it without a student vote in favor of raising it again

it CANNOT be raised PER YEAR it can be raised ONE TIME without a student vote

this is confirmed from the office of the legislative member that wrote the bill

Craig Holzheauser

Legislative Director

Office of Representative Myra Crownover

CAP 1N.10

(512) 463-0582

so contrary to what people believe in greenweenies.noinfo the university CANNOT keep raising the fee 10% or $1 dollar per year without a student vote it was able to be raised 1 time for 10% to 11 dollars