By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Students who took humanities or social science courses during
fall or winter quarter will be finding an additional fee on their
next bill from the university.
The fees are part of the College of Letters &
Science’s Instructional Enhancement Initiative, which pay for
class Web sites and computer labs. The fee increased for humanities
and social science classes to place them on par with their south
campus counterparts, according to John Sandbrook, assistant provost
of the College of Letters & Science.
Students will now pay $3.50 per unit (as opposed to the previous
$2.50), but the cost will increase to $4 next year to support the
College Library’s College Library Instructional Computing
Commons lab in preparation for enrollment growth impacts expected
in the future.
The Student Fee Advisory Committee approved the increase.
Campus reaction has been mixed over the fee’s usage
““ which generates $2.8 million annually ““ with many
students complaining about having classes that didn’t utilize
the fee.
“It’s more of a dollar average cost, than a specific
fee for service,” Sandbrook said.
Without the fee, UCLA could not upgrade computers and other
related services, Sandbrook said.
“What people forget is that not all our money comes from
the state,” he continued.
Because of a computer glitch, the increase, which was supposed
to take effect in fall, was not reflected on students’
billing statements. The additional $1 per unit has been added to
the most recent bills.
Third-year history and economics student Jared Frandle agreed
with the funding.
“It’s an investment in our future,” he said.
“One dollar in the long run won’t make that much
difference.”
The marginal increase didn’t bother other students.
“I don’t care, mommy and daddy pay my bill,”
said Jeff Brown, a fourth-year economics and political science
student.
Officials originally gave less funding to humanities and social
science professors because of the misconception that they would not
have as many opportunities to utilize the Web in their classes,
Sandbrook said.
“What we have found was that in the north campus, in
language courses and art history courses, there is a significant
amount of usage,” Sandbrook said.
UCLA is ranked by ZDnet.com as the tenth-most wired university
in the nation, following No. 1-ranked Carnegie Mellon
University.
From the Web sites created by IEI, to intercontinental video
conferences done in some classes, to My.UCLA, students are
increasingly becoming engaged by UCLA’s technological
opportunities.
According to Sandbrook, My.UCLA use since winter 2000 increased
38 percent.
“We’re seeing an increased usage on lots of
fronts,” he said.