N.C. State's fee advisory committee has recommended two increases in yearly student athletics fees, athletic director Lee Fowler said Saturday.

Last week, the committee recommended raising the debt reduction fee for athletics by $30 and the intercollegiate athletics operations fee by $16.50, Fowler said. The fees for the 2008-09 school year were $66 for debt reduction and $134 for operations.

The current operations fee is the lowest for a school in the UNC system. The athletic department had requested $30 for debt reduction to help fund facilities improvements and $22.50 for operations in hopes of adding $500,000 to the annual athletics budget.

If Chancellor James Oblinger approves of all the fee recommendations, he will send them to the school's board of trustees for approval. The UNC system Board of Governors must grant final approval to any fee increase.

"We're very happy about getting it," Fowler said. "It's going to help the student-athletes a great deal with finishing the facilities off. So we're really happy about the fee committee voting for it."

In a nonbinding vote earlier in the week, 57 percent of 3,400 students polled rejected the operations fee and 72 percent rejected the debt-reduction fee.

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