Not sure what my lodge charges as I'm not as active as I'd like to be.
Some of thaws degree fees seem rather high to me. If we are wanting to appeal to young men, a high degree fee might just cause them to not turn in that petition as they cannot afford it!
Contrarily, there's also a lot of talk about perceived value. If I'm only paying $40.00 for a degree, my perceived value is a lot lower than if I'm paying $100.00.
It's actually similar to universities. I heard a recent interview on NPR about this. Many private universities have a much higher sticker price than the average person pays. That's why tuition might be $56,000.00 for all expenses on paper, but often times fewer than 20% of students pay that full price, and the majority pay less than $25,000.00. It's all about perceived value, and they've found that having that higher sticker price attracts better students who perceive the education at their institution to be better than one at a lower price point, regardless of whether or not there's any trying to that.
The same thing can be said for a store that, right above their list price, has the 'MSRP' value listed. Why list it? No one charges that high of a price. They list it because of perceived value/savings.
So there's actually a pretty strong case to be made for raising dues purely for the sake of perceived value, as strange as that may seem. Human nature is weird sometimes.