Increasing numbers of international students at MU and the need for more staff to work with them prompted the creation of a new fee specifically for international students this week.
Effective this summer, MU will charge international students an extra $80 per regular semester and $40 per summer session to cover costs incurred by the second phase of the Student Exchange Visitor Information System. In fall 2009, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement contacted MU informing it of SEVIS II, a database that keeps track of telephone numbers, addresses and other information on all international students studying in the U.S. SEVIS II will be more rigorous than SEVIS was.
“It’s a big time reporting system,” International Center Director Jim Scott said. “If a student comes here to study and decides to change their major, telephone number or address we would have to report it immediately to the federal government. As it is now we have several weeks to comply to make the change.”
The fee, brought about after a 23 percent increase in international student enrollment since 2005, will cover the costs of hiring two counselors and two other staff members who will work with IT and data analysis. The International Center staff assessed the center would need these jobs because of the extra amount of work SEVIS II requires.
“When we first were notified of this we basically started by gathering information on the workload the current academic advisors had,” Scott said. “So we studied how much time they spent with students and how much time they used to process information about students and maintained their information compliance. We decided that they were at maximum capacity and couldn’t add more work to those counselors.”
International students are typically charged non-resident tuition, but about 70 percent of them are in graduate programs so their tuition is often covered, Scott said.
Graduate student Chu-Chun Fu said $80 didn’t seem like much but she wishes MU would be clearer as to where the money is going.
“I mean, $80 doesn’t seem like that much for a semester but is that money really going to the place that it’s supposed to go?” Fu said. “I think people would feel okay if it was a justified reason as to why, but just you know sending an email saying well there’s $80 going into our pocket for X, Y and Z reason. I don’t think it’s the best way of explaining it.”
Scott said international students understood the need for federal compliance to the system so they were fine with the fee.
Fu said though she understood the change was systemic and not specific to MU, she would like to see how other universities were handling it. She said she thought the email sent to students explaining the fee was vague.
“I think the language in the letter was, ‘This policy has been approved by the appropriate university official,’” Fu said. “I think that doesn’t seem like a good enough explanation because this is a policy that affects all international students but you went through some anonymous official and said here’s our decision.”
The International Center is offering information sessions to any students with questions about the new fee. Fu added that hearing it explained in person might clear up the ambiguity of the fee.
“I think the overall community would appreciate a better understanding of where that fee is going to and how our needs are being better served,” Fu said. “I think with that people would be more accepting or open to the idea.”
Scott said MU wants to be supportive of international students on campus and imposing a fee took a lot of thought.
“It’s hard for us to impose a fee on these students,” Scott said. “We just have to do it to meet federal requirement. I would also say this: At least this fee is charged directly to students who benefit directly from the service.”
