Assessing the State of Mandatory Fees in America's Public Colleges and Universities: Causes and Consequences

Objectives Mandatory fees in American's public universities and colleges are ubiquitous. While many of these fees provide for essential university functions, others provide particularized benefits for small groups of students. Despite importance of the topic, we know very little about how universities assess fees. Methods In this article, we catalog every university fee at every U.S. public college and university during academic year 2014–2015 and conduct multivariate analysis to determine the conditions under which institutions assess more and higher fees. Results We discover considerable disparity in how fees are assessed. Both university characteristics and state policy affect the amount of fees that colleges and universities assess. Conclusions The heterogeneous assessment of university fees raises important questions about equity and responsiveness of public institutions.