Despite claims by the Student Association Mass Transit Board, there were no problems with next year’s chargeable credit hour projections, said Eddie Williams, vice president for finance and planning.

At an SAMTB meeting on April 17, Board Chairman Dave Emerick said the chargeable credit hours estimate used to draft the fiscal year 1990 was high and could result in a $49,000 deficit, but was denied a request to reconvene the NIU President John LaTourette’s Fee Study Committee.

Williams said because chargeable credit hour “projections are not an exact science, one tries to be as conservative as possible and yet realistic” when estimating credit hours.

The fee study process begins in September or October, which is about 10 months before the next school year begins, Williams said. Subcommittees work with estimated credit hours and fee requests until the fee study committee makes a recommendation to LaTourette in February, he said.

For FY90, Williams said the chargeable credit hours projected should be within one to two percent of the actual credit hours. That demonstrates a “really sound” projection, he said.

e said the only way to avoid estimating more credit hours than there actually will be is to “be even more conservative” with the projections.

With projections lower than the actual number of students who will attend NIU in FY90, “one would have to up the student fee even more to compensate for these conservative figures,” Williams said.

Employees in the finance and planning office “never hear any complaints (from groups who receive funds from student fees) when the estimate is a little low,” he said, because the groups receive more funds than they requested.

“We don’t want to be pressured into (estimating) conservative chargeable credit hours so what we’re doing is inflating the student fee,” Williams said.

Emerick said he requested the fee study committee reconvene because the SAMTB’s projected deficit and because not all of the groups that requested student fees received the same credit hour estimates.

Although the estimated chargeable credit hours for FY90 might be high, Williams said all of the groups that requested funds from student fees in the fee study process received the same credit hour projections.

During the fee study process, groups were given the most recent chargeable credit hour estimates and “as far as I know, everyone received the same updates” throughout the process, Williams said.