The Student Fees Commission for Wichita State’s Student Government sat down Monday morning to discuss student fees, gearing up for a few days of hearings and discussions about where to allocate funds. But they were forced to change plans after learning of a budget shortfall due to insufficient headcount enrollment.
Lyndsay Pletcher, executive director of budget, informed the committee that they were about $929,000 short of what was expected — a 9% shortfall for fiscal year 2026. The committee is made up of student representatives, as well as Vice President for Student Affairs Teri Hall, Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships Sheelu Surender and David Miller, the interim senior vice president for Finance, Administration and Operations.
The commission will have to decide how much to raise student fees and how much to cut from services and organizations funded by those fees.
“We need to figure what we’re comfortable with — how much we’re comfortable raising student fees because 9%, I would not be comfortable with,” commissioner and Speaker of the Student Senate Victoria Owens said.
Student fees hearings and deliberations, originally planned to start on Monday, will now not start until Wednesday.
SGA treasurer Jia Wen Wang, who leads the Student Fees Commission, also requested that the Student Senate meet Tuesday, outside of its normal schedule. The Commission will ask the Senate to allow the use of a $600,000 Special Projects and Capital fund to address the shortfall.
Some commissioners expressed concerns about depleting the fund. Getting permission from the Senate would not necessarily mean that money would be used but would give the commission the ability to do so.
Potential funding cuts
On Monday, the commission also emailed campus organizations and groups that receive student fee funding to prepare a report on how different decreases in funding might affect them. They asked for those reports to be filed by Tuesday, March 4, the following day.
After hearing about the shortfall, Hall said she called an emergency meeting with division leadership. The Division of Student Affairs includes Student Health Services, Counseling and Psychological Services and more. Student services receive the majority of student fees.
Hall said there are several potential impacts on these entities: cutting hours or a reduction in services, an increase in fees to students using certain services and even staffing cuts.
Enrollment declines
This year, Wichita State saw an increase in headcount, meaning the total number of enrolled students, but a decrease in full-time enrolled students, meaning fewer students paying the bulk of student fees.
An “enrollment cliff,” meaning that enrollment in higher education will drop, has been predicted nationwide.
“I think this is our new norm,” Hall said. “And I think while our model is based on traditional undergraduate and graduate enrollment, some of the institutional growth in enrollment has been in non-degree programs, and those areas don’t pay student fees … And so I do think that this is an opportunity for us to figure out if this is the way it’s going to be from now on.
“How do we make sure that we’re the most fiscally responsible in this process?”
Owens said she would prefer not to raise fees by more than 3%.
“I think what (students) can expect is that myself and the other senators and people on Finance Commission will do literally anything in our power to ensure that we don’t have to increase student fees but still maintain the services on campus that are necessary and important,” Owens said. “At the end of the day, I think it’s really meeting in the middle.”
The Senate will meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. A video recording of the meeting will be available via SGA’s YouTube page on Wednesday.
Monday’s student fees hearing is available on YouTube. All student fees proceedings will be livestreamed.
