U. breaks down General Fee

The Athletic Department gets $4.12 million. The Undergraduate Admissions office receives $3.07 million. And about $2.34 million goes to Student Health Services. Those are the three largest annual expenditures from the approximately $28 million in revenues that come from the so-called General Fee, according to official figures released yesterday. Under pressure from student groups in recent weeks to show how the General Fee is distributed, University officials provided the Student Activities Council and The Daily Pennsylvanian with a detailed breakdown of where the money goes -- almost entirely to fund student services, activities and groups. University Budget Director Mike Masch said General Fee revenues do not form a single, University-wide budget. Instead, various University divisions make their own budgets and get portions of their funding -- anywhere from 1 percent to 100 percent -- from the General Fee, Masch said. "The General Fee is a resource that the central University administration controls," Masch said. "Basically, it exists to give us the flexibility to fill in the funding for those things that might not get funded otherwise." In addition to their tuition, all of the approximately 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students pay amounts ranging from about $1,000 to $2,000 apiece to the General Fee fund, according to Masch. All undergraduates pay the same amount -- about $2,000 per year. Nearly half of the General Fee expenditures fall under the broad category of "Student Services." About $12.9 million, or 46 percent of the total fee revenues, goes to fund 81 percent of this part of the Vice Provost for University Life office's budget. Indeed, the VPUL division, which is mostly oriented toward student life, receives 91 percent of its funding from the General Fee. The student service funds go toward about 50 different offices, programs and services, according to figures from the Office of Budget and Management Analysis. The top-five funding recipients under the Student Services category are Student Health Services, with $2.34 million; Career Planning and Placement Services, with $1.81 million; Counseling and Psychological Services, with $1.26 million; Academic Support Programs, with $1.16 million; and Residential Programs and Services, with $1.13 million. Central budget administrators do not play a major role in determining how the money is spent once it reaches these offices. The General Fee is distributed among 12 self-budgeting University divisions known as "responsibility centers," officials said. Each center must work on its own to maximize use of the funds it receives. In addition to Student Services and the Athletic Department, funds go to the VPUL for student activities, the Annenberg Center for student performing arts and the Office of International Programs for Study Abroad and other programs. Student Financial Services gets about $1.46 million, or 5 percent of the General Fee revenues. Student government and student activities -- including the Undergraduate Assembly, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and SAC -- receive about $1.43 million. Other offices and centers receiving General Fee funding include the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, with $400,000; the Penn Women's Center, with $275,000; and CUPID, the annual one-stop center for student services at the start of the fall semester, with $71,000.

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