Washington County is joining a growing chorus of complaints about the high cost of one college that all counties are forced to help fund, even though very few students attend.

Last year, Washington County paid $47,000, as required by law, for three students to go to the SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. For the same cost, the county could have paid for 14 students to attend Hudson Valley Community College.

And unlike HVCC, which is a two-year school, students can attend FIT for six years and get a master’s degree, with their county paying for every year. By the end, the cost for those three students would be the same as sending 42 students to HVCC.

“It’s not that I have anything against fashion; it’s just I think it is completely unfair,” Washington County Administrator Chris DeBolt said in a presentation Thursday at a Washington County Board of Supervisors Finance Committee meeting. “The charge-back is astronomical.”

Most community college students don’t know it, but their tuition is partly subsidized by their county. Each community college bills a “charge-back” to the student’s home county for roughly one-third of the college’s operating costs. Usually that’s about $3,000. But FIT charges $15,100.

FIT is the only school in the state that offers baccalaureate and master’s degrees but is funded like a community college.

Washington County officials and many others are now complaining about the way the state forces counties to pay for the expensive college. Nassau and Suffolk counties have both taken the matter to court against FIT and lost. In recent years, officials have focused on the state, demanding that it start following an existing state law that requires the state to reimburse each county for all FIT charge-backs.

The charge-backs to FIT represent nearly 10 percent of the payments Washington County makes to community colleges. Last year, the county paid $47,165 to FIT out of $500,000 in total to various colleges. HVCC received the lion’s share at $354,991 for 135 students, of which 37 were full-time. The county pays a proportional amount for part-time students, based on their credit hours each semester.

The charge-backs take a huge amount off student bills, noted Washington County Treasurer Al Nolette. He noted that when the county pays $15,100 per FIT student, “as a result, the student pays a lower tuition.”

Others have noted that if charge-backs were eliminated for FIT, students could see their tuition double.

By law, students are supposed to pay one-third of their college’s operating costs, while the county takes on a third and the state takes the last third. However, the state now pays about 28 percent for its share of most community college, DeBolt said.

The state also used to reimburse counties for all of their FIT charge-backs but stopped paying in 2001, according to a summary from the SUNY Office of the Chancellor.

Funding for FIT has been a matter of contentious discussion for years. Nassau and Suffolk counties went to court to argue that they should not have to pay charge-backs to FIT because the state was not paying, but both counties lost.

In 2012, the SUNY chancellor proposed that the state go back to paying the charge-backs for FIT, but only for students who had completed the first two years at the school. It would have cost $11.2 million at the time for the state to pay the charge-backs for every junior, senior and master-level student at the school. The proposal did not pass.

FIT is funded by the community college charge-back system because it was once a two-year school. It was chartered in 1944, and in 1951 it became the second community college in the state to offer an Associate in Applied Science degree. That was still the case in 1955, when the charge-back system was created, according to the state.

Then local industries asked FIT to provide a baccalaureate and advanced degree curriculum, and in 1975, the state allowed FIT to start offering a four-year degree. Four years later, legislators again amended the education law to allow FIT to offer master’s degrees. That amendment specified that FIT could still bill charge-backs for all students, but in 1994, the state agreed to reimburse every county for the FIT charge-backs, state records show.

That law is still on the books, although state officials say the money has not been included in the budget since 2001.

FIT spokeswoman Cheri Fein did not want to comment on the situation, saying the college would not offer an opinion on charge-backs and whether the state should reimburse counties for the costs.