College is expensive and no student wants to pay more — unless they see benefits that directly affect them.

The Wichita State University School of Art and Design is considering pushing for an increase to their student fees from $8 per credit hour — roughly $24 per class — to $60 per credit hour.

“The only way that we’re really going to be able to make sure we have what we need is to increase student fees,” said Robert Bubp, foundation coordinator for the school of art and design. “All of that money essentially would go back to student benefit.”

The increase would help update necessary equipment for the school including new desks and computers. It would also allow the school to purchase new equipment like 3D printers and large-scale photo printers.

“[The computers] are woefully out of date,” Bubp said. “We have desks in one classroom that have been there for 40 years … we don’t have the eight or $10 thousand to buy them.”

Bubp said photography students have to print their work off campus because the school doesn’t have large-scale glossy ink printers for them.

Other ideas have also been discussed, including a 24-hour “ideas lab” or green screens, said Royce Smith, director of the college of art and design.

“Nobody likes talking about fees,” he said. “[But] a fee helps students use cutting edge equipment they couldn’t use otherwise.”

Because of these benefits, many students in the department have shown support for the increase.

“With [the increase] it will help provide better opportunities for students,” graphic design student Ethan Welch said.

The school has reached out to students in the program through a survey and three “town hall” meetings that informed students of what the increase would entail. Many students wanted to help gain support for the increase.

“At the end of this conversation, the students asked what they could do to help,” Bubp said. “One suggested and threw out there, ‘would a petition help?’”

The petition is in favor of the increase. Students running this petition have collected about 100 signatures from other art and design students who support the increase to $60 per credit hour, Smith said.

Even with the increase, Bubp said tuition and fees would remain lower than other regional art schools at Kansas University, Kansas State, Oklahoma State and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Bubp said that if an increase of this size were ever approved, it would most likely be brought on slowly over several years.

He said the Dean of Fine Arts and the Vice President of Academic Affairs are considering an increase to $16 per credit hour, but the Kansas Board of Regents has yet to weigh in on the issue.

A more substantial increase to $60 per credit hour is “not on the table at this point,” Bubp said.

“We haven’t really figured out anything concrete, it’s all just proposals and ideas,” he said.

However, Bubp said a fees increase is necessary.

“We’re going to raise the fees if the Board of Regents will let us,” he said. “The question is really ‘can we transform the department from sort of putting things together with masking tape to really being a place where you have state of the art equipment available to you?’”

Fine arts student Rebecca Russell had similar thoughts.

“The art and design school is a sinking ship,” she said. “We can’t keep putting bubble gum in the holes.”