Sean McMinn
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Cal Poly will increase international students’ tuition by $150 per quarter beginning in fall, and the newly established fee is set to increase in 2015.
The fee will help to make up for a funding deficit in the Cal Poly International Center’s budget, center director Cari Moore said. It will increase to $300 per quarter beginning in Fall Quarter 2015.
Until now, international students paid regular out-of-state tuition.
Students learned about the fee in an early May email sent to all incoming and continuing international students. In the email, Moore described the fee as providing “needed funding to enhance and improve existing services to international students as well as to cover deficits in the current budget for programming and immigration-related requirements.”
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong approved the fee in March, Moore said.
“We did look at what the needs of the unit were … looking at what other institutions are doing in terms of implementing an international student fee,” Moore said. “For the education students are receiving here, looking at some of our comparable schools, it still keeps us far less expensive than those.”
A working group with members from different parts of campus will begin meeting in fall to help determine needs of international students and advise administrators on how to spend the fee.