Incoming Lincoln University students will have to pay a new application fee, the school's curators decided last week.
But they won't be able to enroll in the Surgical Technology program, because it will close in May 2017.
Education majors also will be paying a new course fee.
Jerome Offord, LU's dean of Administration and Student Affairs, told the board in a memo the new enrollment fee is the best approach to getting students to commit to attending Lincoln University. "The enrollment fee allows students to secure their space on campus," he said.
The board approved non-refundable fees of $300 for new or transfer students who are staying on campus, and $175 for those students living off-campus.
The new fee replaces the $125 housing deposit, $75 orientation fee and current $20 application fee.
Offord noted students will pay the fee just one time as long as they are continuously enrolled at LU. Students who leave the school for longer than six semesters (not including summer) will have to pay the fee again when they re-apply.
Said Sewell, LU's provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, has told the board funding issues are behind the request to close the Surgical Technology program.
"The positions were funded based on a SAFFRA grant, and the grant will end in September," he explained at the curators meeting. "We'll have to find the resources to keep the two staff members" for the last year of the current program.
Ann McSwain, head of LU's Nursing Science and Allied Health department, told the board the program has had successes.
"We have a 95 percent placement rate," she said, "but we've had small graduation numbers, also."
And, McSwain said, retention has been an issue - between 55 and 72 percent.
Curator Greg Gaffke said he'd contacted both Jefferson City hospitals and JCMG to see what they thought of the program.
He told the board JCMG's clinical coordinator sent an email saying: "We enjoy having the students here and our surgery center would love for the program to continue.
"We do not hire a lot because we are a small ACS" - ambulatory surgery center - "but when the opportunity arises, I would definitely look at the LU students first."
Gaffke urged Lincoln administrators to keep the program going long enough to see if other hospitals and surgery centers in a 40-60-mile radius - including Columbia, the Lake of the Ozarks, Sedalia and Rolla - would be interested in the LU students.
"This is really a fiscal concern," Sewell responded. "It's an issue of how do we move resources from this program to the BSN (bachelor of science in nursing) program that we've now approved" adding two more teachers.
The new course fee for education majors was caused by a change in the certification test they take.
The PRAXIS, which used to cost $95, is being replaced with the MoPTA, which costs $275.
Sewell told the curators in a memo most other schools are handling the cost of the test as a course fee, collecting those funds and "paying for the first test administration" for each student from the collected funds.
The board also approved a fee waiver for employees, their spouses and dependents when taking graduate-level courses at LU. Lincoln already provides a similar waiver for employees and their families for its undergraduate courses.
And the board is requiring an official LU parking permit for drivers to park on certain city streets, after Jefferson City's Council last December authorized LU Police to enforce parking ordinances on those streets.
The city's authorization - and the streets now requiring an LU permit - involves:
• Atchison Court.
• East Atchison Street, between Chestnut and Locust streets.
• Chestnut Street, between East Dunklin Street and Leslie Boulevard.
• The south side of East Dunklin, between Lafayette and Locust streets.
• The east (LU) side of Lafayette, between Stadium Boulevard and East Dunklin.
• The west side of Locust, between East Dunklin and East Atchison streets.