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UNFEESIBLE LSU graduate student fees, at around $4,600, are rising and are among the highest in the country. BY BAILEY CHAUVIN @BaileyChauvin
Sociology graduate student Dustin Lovercamp learned about graduate students’ required semester fees after his classes were purged during his first semester last year. When he contacted the University to learn why his classes were purged, he learned he owed about $1600 in fees. “[The fees] came as a big surprise,” Lovercamp said. “I came from an undergraduate university where fees were included with the tuition. When I signed my graduate assistant contract, there was no mention of fees. It made it seem like everything was covered.” LSU’s required graduate student fees, approximated at $4600, are among the highest in the nation, according to Georgia Institute of Technology Biological Sciences professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary PhD in Quantitative Biosciences Joshua Weitz. Like undergraduate students, graduate students must pay fees each semester. However, these fees aren’t included with tuition. Graduate students are told they will have to pay required fees when they sign their graduate assistant contracts, but Creative Writing graduate student Christie Lauder said many graduate students aren’t aware of the specific price they will pay. “I was lucky to have talked to an administrator who said to estimate my fees at about $3000 a year,” Lauder said. “That was because I personally sought somebody out and asked them. For everyone else, all you get is a letter that mentions the fees, but you don’t get told what those fees are.” These fees can increase substantially from year to year, partially because the University is unable to raise tuition. The required fees from fall 2017 and spring 2018 were each about $1650, and totaled about $3315. During fall 2018 and spring 2019, graduate student fees totaled at about $3890, with about $1940 per semester, according to the 2017-18 and 2018-19 fee schedules. 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 fee schedules
see GRAD SCHOOL, page 2
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