SOME fees are regarded as “unique” or peculiar to a college or faculty.
At the Conservatory of Music, students are charged a “music fee.”
According to Dr. Raul Sunico, the dean of Music, the music fee varied in the past semesters, depending on the instruments the students were majoring in.
Starting this school year, the fee has been standardized.
“Collectively, the students should shoulder some of the costs of maintaining the instruments, whether they use them or not,” Sunico explained.
At the College of Rehabilitation Sciences (CRS), students pay P200 for the “college fee.”
The fee, Dean Consuelo Suarez said, is for the “activities of the College such as symposia, and the honoraria given to the speakers in these events.”
Also exclusive to CRS is the student research fee, which is for the maintenance of the equipment used by interns for research. Only fifth-year students pay this fee, Faculty Secretary Michael Jorge Peralta said.
Faculty of Pharmacy students pay the P50 “organizational fee.”
According to Prof. Florita Aguiling, Budget Office director, the fee funds the meetings and office supplies of the student organizations in the Faculty. She explained it was the organizations that requested the fee.
In the College of Architecture (CA) and College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD), students pay the gallery fee for the maintenance of the Beato Angelico Gallery at the ground floor. CA and CFAD students use the gallery for their exhibits.
Graduate School (GS) students pay the P200 “special class fee.”
According to Dr. Michael Anthony Vasco, GS faculty secretary, the fee is to fund classes that fail to meet the minimum enrollment size of 10 students per class.
He said instead of asking only the students belonging to those classes to shoulder the expenses, the Faculty thought of distributing the burden among all students.
“The wisdom of the system is to lessen the burden on those students who belong to classes which have less enrollees and save the courses from extinction,” Vasco said.
