According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the union, 21.2 percent of the fees — which are charged to graduate students and undergrads — are funneled back into paying graduate student teacher assistant salaries.

While the Eli Broad College of Business charges special program fees that pay for TA salaries and other expenses, those fees are only charged to undergraduate juniors and seniors — not graduate students.

“I was a little indignant, but I wasn’t surprised,” said Covert, a fourth-year computer science graduate student. “We had no real indication as to what these fees were going to initially.”

Every year, students in the College of Engineering pay a program fee in addition to tuition. The fees cover some of the college’s expenses aren’t taken care of by grants and tuition.

For Spring 2008, the fee was $448 for students taking five or more credits and $273 for students taking four or fewer credits.

Finding that fees that were being paid by TAs were going partially to pay their own salaries was a shock, said Sandra Schmidt, president of the GEU.

“There’s always been a concern about these fees, but this has certainly upped those concerns,” Schmidt said. “If they were being used for just department and lab fees, it would have been a different issue. But now we know that a sizable portion pays for TA salaries, and that changes the nature of our contract.”

The union, whose contract expires May 15, is asking that the university waive the fees for graduate students. Its current contract with MSU waives some universitywide fees, but graduate employees are still charged school-specific fees.

Fees being recycled into TA salaries is not as irregular a practice as it may seem, said Dr. Tom Wolff, associate dean of engineering for undergraduate studies.

Wolff, who oversees the budget for the College of Engineering, likened the situation to a student employee paying matriculation fees.

“As I pay taxes to the state of Michigan, some of that goes back into my salary,” Wolff said. “If you’re a student and you’re paying a matriculation fee, they’re all paying things that turn back up in their own salaries in some cases.”

Covert said that argument doesn’t hold water.

“It’s one thing to pay state and federal taxes because those go toward things that you use all the time,” he said. “I don’t see how a fee that goes toward TA salaries — when I’m not taking classes that utilize TAs — does that. Why am I being made to subsidize part of my own salary?”