Kansas University students provide $80 a year to Kansas Athletics through campus fees, a source of financing that has pumped about $2 million a year into women’s and other nonrevenue sports at Kansas Athletics Inc.

The fee for athletics represents less than 1 percent of the fees and in-state tuition paid by KU students,according to a study of 222 Division I schools by USA Today. Per-student fees for athletics at other schools include $30.40 at Kansas State University, $45 at Iowa State University, zero at the University of Texas and $104 at Texas Tech University.

Longwood College, in Virginia, topped the list at $2,022.

Among Division I schools, USA Today determined, such mandated fees generated more than $795 million for athletics during the 2008-09 school year — a total that had increased, when adjusted for inflation, by 18 percent since 2005.

The KU fee had increased in recent years, as students voted to boost their per-semester fees for athletics from $25 to $40, to help finance construction of a new boathouse along the Kansas River. The fee is scheduled to revert back to $25 per semester in June 2011.

The new boathouse is used both by the KU rowing team and KU’s club team, which is not part of Kansas Athletics, and that’s one of the ways students benefit from such fees, said Jim Marchiony, an associate athletics director. Students also gain free admittance to all intercollegiate athletics events on campus, except for football and men’s basketball.

And students may buy a “combo pack” — which provides tickets to all home football and men’s basketball games — for $150, which works out to about $5 per game compared with the $40, $50 or even more that the general public is charged.

“In my mind, for us to hold that combo pack at a $5 a game price is pretty outstanding,” Marchiony said.

The athletics fee is among 18 assessed at KU as part of the overall “Lawrence campus fee” of $428.95, as detailed on a fee schedule the KU Registrar’s Office posts online. Among other per-semester fees included: Student Health Fee, $107.80; Student Union Building Fee, $41; Counseling and Psychological Services, $12; and Child Care Facility Construction Fee, $4.