BSC summer session fees are handled differently
By Patrick Sawers

When Buffalo State College students checked their mailboxes a few weeks ago, they received an oversized postcard notifying them of the upcoming summer semester. The flier, which advertised “the courses you want and need at a price you can afford,” cited the advantages of “real professors in small class settings.”

For undergraduates, the per-hour cost of summer tuition is essentially identical to that of the fall and spring semesters. But according to Gary J. Phillips, BSC's associate vice president and comptroller , tuition money the school collects over the summer is handled and distributed differently.

“The summer budget is self-sufficient ,” Phillips said. “We run that kind of separate from the regular fall and spring budget.”

Because the money stays on campus, the process differs from the fall and spring semesters, in which tuition revenue must be forwarded to the SUNY administration in Albany.

“For the fall and spring, we turn those revenues over to the State University of New York, and they allocate accordingly,” he said. “It goes into a special state fund, it's state monies. However, we control the summer session ourselves .”

“All campus-generated revenue stays on the campus,” said Dave Hennihan, public relations spokesperson for SUNY Administration . He added that individual SUNY schools, Buffalo State included, do not receive monetary allocations from SUNY's administrative headquarters during the summer sessions .

According to Phillips, summer tuition money is deposited in what is called an income fund reversible account , from which the school can draw to make necessary expenditures.

“Probably 85 percent is (spent on) salaries,” he said. “Then there's things such as personal services and instructional supplies.”

More than 500 course sections will be offered over the summer, which is divided into three sessions:

• Session A runs from June 1 to June 26.
• Session B runs from June 28 to July 24.
• Session C runs from July 26 to August 14.

The cost of summer tuition is:

• undergraduate courses: $181 per credit hour
• graduate courses: $288 per credit hour