‘Show me the money’: Students call for transparency amid tuition increase

USC holds a reputation as an expensive school of pervasive wealth. It is the sixth most expensive college in the United States, ranking first in the same category among California colleges. Ivy League universities, which compete with USC to attract the nation’s top applicants, also feature in that top 20. 

With USC levying another 5% increase in tuition fees — as well as imposing a mandatory $93 transportation fee on all students — to bring the total cost of tuition up to $66,640 for the 2023-24 academic year, that reputation is likely to stay for the time being. Students such as Odalys Molina Martinez, a sophomore majoring in business administration, have voiced their desire for greater transparency about where those additional funds are going.

“I personally would like to know [where the extra tuition is going],” Martinez said. “I think most of my friends would also like to know, considering we generally know where our tuition is going into, of course, paying for classes and all that stuff; but we don’t really know why it costs 90k to attend USC. Knowing where their money would go would be very beneficial.”

Additional costs for essential services such as housing, dining and transportation have inflated the expected cost of attendance by more than $5,000 to a total of $90, 921. It reflects a concerning time for students facing spiraling costs everywhere in an inflationary economy. The University pointed out that this inflation is spawning higher tuition costs around the country.

“Like other universities across the country, inflation is impacting our costs,” USC wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan March 8. “Tuition is the largest source of the university’s academic operating budget, which pays for teaching, student services and administrative support.”

Inflation currently sits at 6%, well above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%. Among those Ivy League universities that have revealed their tuition fees for the upcoming academic year — Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University — the cost of studying is also set to increase by a range of 4% to 5% from 2022-23. 

Higher education institutions across the country are facing tightening revenue streams. USC faces a similar predicament, as its endowment has fallen 7.3% to $7.32 billion as of June. The University is expected to incur extra costs in labor union renegotiations with USC shuttle drivers and dispatchers and with graduate student workers.

Martinez, who is from a low-income background, said she was eager to learn about what this might mean for her financial aid package. Combined with the increased sticker price for attending the University, Martinez said that she, “like many others, [is] very afraid of how our financial aid packages will look like this upcoming school year.”

Despite the worsening economic trends, the University wrote in its statement that the “undergraduate financial aid pool is expected to increase 7 percent” from the $814 million awarded during the 2022-23 academic year. While not a final figure, it suggests that USC will not cut down on financial aid packages, although it is unclear if they will go unaffected entirely.

“Financial aid packages are not out yet, so I think that will really dictate if inflation has really hit us or not,” Martinez said.

The increased costs have not just manifested in tuition fees alone. Students will also be made to pay a new $93 transportation fee, which the University claims will offset rising costs related to the USC Lyft program.

Despite service being expanded from 16 hours a week to 56 since its launch in 2016, the reintroduction of a shared rides policy — colloquially referred to as “Shryft” — in January was met with criticism and anger from students over safety, efficacy and pay. Martinez said one of the reasons she came to USC was “knowing that the free Lyft program was already included” in the tuition she was charged.

In an interview with the Daily Trojan, Divya Jakatdar and Michelle Lu, Undergraduate Student Government president-elect and vice-president-elect respectively, reaffirmed this point as a platform to ask for greater transparency.

“We want to work towards a safer model of free Lyft,” Jakatdar said. “I guess it’s about $32 to $34 million cheaper per year for the University to do the shared Lyft model instead, but the real question is: Where does that go? And are there other sources of funding or is there anywhere else that we can draw that money from to ensure that an issue that students care about so much is addressed?”

The rise in the cost to attend college is set to hinder students from lower-income families the most, as they are least likely to absorb it. Among the resources available to USC students at risk of food, housing and financial insecurity is Student Basic Needs. Jakatdar said that, to achieve their goals on increasing resources for the Student Basic Needs department, “USC needs to become more accessible and more affordable to a greater student body and the students that need more resources to make ends meet.”

She claimed that while she and Lu worked “very closely” with Student Basic Needs, there was “one full-time employee for the last few months.”

Compared to UC Berkeley’s Basic Needs Center, which has seven full-time staffers on top of 34 student staffers who are paid a stipend, Jatakdar said the one employee that USC’s Student Basic Needs has is “just not enough to make up for the amount of students who are relying on the resources that they provide.”

Martinez said she believes the increase in tuition fees remains unjustified considering the fees it has paid for other programs, including USC Football Head Coach Lincoln Riley’s reported $110 million deal.

“Knowing that USC has that much money, I feel that USC shouldn’t be taking advantage of students, especially when we all know that inflation is rising and that not all of us are adjusted correctly to it,” Martinez said.