In fiscal year 2015, undergraduate students paying in-state tuition and taking 15 credit hours at Wichita State paid $698.25 a semester in student fees. Students taking 15 credit hours this semester pay $781.18 in fees, not including program-specific fees. That’s on top of $3,354.30 in tuition.

WSU has the third-highest tuition and third-highest student fees of the six Kansas Board of Regents universities.

The University of Kansas has the lowest student fees and the highest tuition of any state university. An in-state undergraduate student taking 15 credit hours at KU pays $5,046 in tuition and $482 in fees. The same student enrolled in 15 credit hours at Emporia State would pay $801.93 in fees but just $2,577.15 in tuition.

Earlier this month, WSU proposed a student fee hike to upgrade campus facilities. The fee would cost undergraduate students taking 15 credit hours an extra $90 a semester.

The university’s infrastructure priorities list says that “(w)hile infrastructure improvements used to be covered, in large part, by state funding, that funding has shrunk big time. Now, remaining funding for these improvements must come from student fees.”

The state of Kansas’s contribution to higher education dropped from $657.4 million in fiscal year 2009 to $574.5 million in fiscal year 2010. Since then, it has fluctuated from as low as $561.2 million to as high as $596.7 million. This fiscal year, Kansas is investing $584.7 million in state institutions.