Several entities funded by student fees at Wichita State are facing funding cuts after the Student Government Association learned of a $929,000 shortfall just days before entering discussions about next year’s budget. 

David Miller, WSU’s senior vice president for administration, finance and operations, said the 9% shortfall was due to a combination of an incorrectly calculated student fee estimate for 2025 and “enrollment challenges” this year.

“Unfortunately, knowing this — it doesn’t change the challenge that you’re currently wrestling with for the fiscal year 2026 budget,” Miller told SGA’s Student Fee Commission as it prepared to deliberate on where to make cuts. 

Where did it start?

The Commission was forced to recommend either funding cuts or increased student fees. They opted to cut funding, partially for some entities and entirely for others. SGA’s Student Senate will discuss and vote on the recommendation on Wednesday, March 26.

The Commission learned of the issue when they convened to begin hearing budget proposals from some of the entities. Fees are allocated on a two-year revolving basis, meaning that some entities were not scheduled to present this year. But the Senate voted to reexamine all the budgets in light of the shortfall. 

Entities were given just over a day to send reports on how 5%, 8%, and 10% cuts would affect their operation. Then, they went before the Commission to explain their proposed budgets, as well as how cuts would impact them. 

The Commission recommended the Cultural Ambassador Program, the WSU Student of the Year Scholarship, The Tilford Commission, Student Affairs’ Assessment and Retention unit and the ShockerStrengths Initiative to receive no funding. 

Others that received large cuts include the esports varsity team and scholarship fund, the Historically Underrepresented Scholarship, the Child Development Center and the debate team. 

What caused the shortfall?

Miller attributed much of the shortfall in student fees for the next year to decreased enrollment of international students due to issues with visas, in combination with an error in calculating 2025 student fees. 

“A lot of the students, they’re running into issues in which they can’t get visas right now, and so that’s creating a challenge for us both this year as well as next year,” Miller said. 

According to Miller, that decline isn’t just hurting the student fees budget, but the university’s bottom line as well.

“Because international students pay higher tuition rates, those fluctuations can have a larger impact on our bottom line than maybe, you know, in-state undergraduate students, or something of that nature,” Miller said. 

Data from the Institute of Higher Education shows that enrollment of international students has decreased since the 2015-2016 academic year, though that number rose again in the 2023-2024 academic year.  

Miller, however, suggested that the current presidential administration is likely contributing to another decline. 

“I would say, back during a previous administration (Donald Trump’s first presidential administration in 2017-2021), we had similar experiences,” he said. 

President Donald Trump has called for more restrictions on visas and may be planning a ban on travel from certain countries, much like the one during his previous administration, which could affect many international students. 

Miscalculation in 2025 student fee estimate

The finance and budget team didn’t learn just how short they were until the Friday before the commission met, according to Lyndsay Pletcher, executive director of budget. Because of the 2026 shortfall, they went back and looked at the past year’s estimate. 

They discovered an oversight in the system that is used to estimate student fee revenue. The system takes into account how much revenue was taken in in previous years as well as how many students are projected to enroll for the coming year. 

Student fee revenue for 2025 was estimated at $507,000 more than it should have been. 

“When we went back with a corrected (2025) data set and ran the analysis as if we had had that data set, the variance in the revenue estimate was the $507,000,” Miller said. 

Of the total fees that students pay, over half goes to the SGA Student Support Services fee. 

In 2025, the university changed how students in the Teacher Apprentice Program were charged student fees. The program was changed from a “course attribute” to a “course subject code.” 

TAP students, Miller said, pay a flat rate within their tuition that goes to student fees rather than being included in the tier system based on hours. 

The TAP program prepares para educators to earn teacher licensures, according to WSU. The program is entirely online. 

Miller said the change was not accounted for in the Electronic Research Administration System, which estimates student fee revenue. 

How much each WSU student pays in fees is determined by a tier system. Undergraduate and graduate students each fall into one of three tiers, excluding TAP students. 

Miller said that enrollment data is updated every semester but isn’t always checked. He said it depends “more on the situation and the environment than maybe we would like.”

“If we’re bogged down in budget cuts and other things, it can be harder to take that time out to look at what the data looks like,” Miller said. “But yes, we try to look at it … as much as we can.”

What does that mean for Student Government?

Gabriel Fonseca, SGA’s adviser, said that SGA normally wouldn’t even learn about a shortfall for the current year until the summer semester. They only learned about it early because the finance team looked at the estimate to figure out why 2026 was coming up short.

“It is helpful that we understand, that way we can prepare in advance a little bit about how they (the student body president and SGA treasurer) may want to respond,” Fonseca said.

According to Fonseca, they can either try to deal with the shortfall now, or leave it to the next session. Then, they can issue “budget clawbacks,” taking a percentage of the budgets from fee-funded entities. 

“They could also say that each of the entities are required to deal with their own budget shortfalls and have to make it up themselves,” Fonseca said. 

Another option is to pull from the Student Fee Reserves to cover a portion or all of the shortfall.

Fonseca said that while the situation is unfortunate, SGA must focus on dealing with what it can control: how funds are allocated and where cuts are made. 

“I don’t think anyone is placing blame on anyone or particularly pointing fingers to say, ‘Oh, this is their fault, or this is their fault,’” Fonseca said. “I think it just, it sucks, but it’s also — we can’t go back and fix it now, and so now we’ve got an attempt to make adjustments and address it.” 

The future of enrollment

After the Commission learned about the shortfall on March 3, Teri Hall, vice president for Student Affairs, said the unexpected changes to the normal process were “an opportunity for us to figure out if this is the way it’s going to be from now on.”

Hall was referring to the “enrollment cliff,” a predicted drop in students enrolling in higher education, especially traditional four or more year degree programs, across the nation. 

“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.” 

WSU announced its highest enrollment ever in October. But despite more students than ever before, full-time equivalent enrollment at the university had dropped, meaning there were more students taking classes but not paying the same fees that full-time students do. 

Miller said it’s “hard to know” what the coming years will bring in terms of enrollment. 

“Student fees are isolated from some of the challenges related to state funding or those things,” Miller said. “But we know that international students are going to continue to be a challenge for us as well, and that will certainly follow into 2027 and 2028.”

Pletcher, who sits on the Student Fees Commission as a nonvoting member, said that while the shortfall is unfortunate, the Commission did its best to balance the budget. 

“It was obviously not an ideal environment but the effort that they (students on the Commission) put forth to really advocate on behalf of their constituents and make sure that they were making the right decisions, it was just admirable to watch them,” Pletcher said. 

All SGA meetings, as well as the Student Fee Commission’s hearings and deliberations are available on the association’s YouTube channel. The Student Senate meets Wednesday nights at 7:30 p.m. in the Rhatigan Student Center, room 233. They will not meet during spring break. 

If the Senate approves the proposed 2026 budget, it will go to the student body president, university president and then the Kansas Board of Regents for review. The budget is expected to be complete in May.