The Oct. 21 Leader-Telegram reported on the increasing cost of attending college in the United States. The story and a graphic contained tuition and fee numbers for UW-Stout that need to be put in context.

The article stated that the resident undergraduate tuition and fee amount for UW-Stout was $7,820 this year, about $1,200 more than UW-Eau Claire and $800 higher than the national average. What the article did not mention was that the UW-Stout figure includes $945 for the laptop lease fee and $163 to rent textbooks.

The laptop fee includes much more than a top-of-the-line computer. It also buys thousands of dollars in software, backpack, cords and accessories, course management systems, service and support, training, network storage, e-mail, Web page space, wireless and wired connectivity on campus, and multimedia classrooms.

The textbook fee saves a student hundreds of dollars a year - and hours of hassle - in buying and reselling textbooks.

UW-Stout administrators work diligently to keep costs as low as possible. The total cost for a resident undergraduate at UW-Stout who stays in a residence hall and takes a meal plan increased 3.2 percent this year. We were able to reduce the laptop fee 15 percent and had no increase in the cost of residence hall rooms. The 5.5 percent increase in tuition was set by the UW System Board of Regents.

These actions took place as the 2009-11 state budget imposed an $11 million budget reduction on UW-Stout, and our employees were told to take six to eight days off without pay, reducing productivity.

UW-Stout prides itself on being an accessible campus for students in the Chippewa Valley and beyond. Rest assured our administrators will do everything possible to keep the cost of attending UW-Stout affordable.