For lack of any state funding, tuition for in-state students at Pima Community College is increasing by 7 percent for the 2015-16 school year. The board made their decision at Wednesday’s afternoon meeting.
Starting July 1, residents will pay $5 more per credit hour (from $70.50 to $75.50) and non-residents $23 more (from $329 to $352 per credit hour). PCC also raised its tuition last year by nearly 8 percent. Up until now, the in-state price for full-time students has been $2,115.
“The college is very sensitive to the impact of tuition increases on our students. When we discussed tuition with student government leaders, they recognized the balance PCC must maintain between keeping tuition low and having the resources necessary to provide quality education and services to our students,” a statement from PCC said.
The board also increased the college’s semester processing fee from $10 to $15, but got rid of the $15 graduation fee and the $2 fee for student ID cards.
This school year, PCC got $7.7 million from the state. A budget deal approved Saturday eliminated all state money for Pima, as well as Maricopa Community Colleges as of next year. Pinal Community College District got $2 million.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2015.
Very doable. Belt tighteni g is required when revenues slow. We need jobs, growth and industry if we want to support all the handout programs. $5 per credit hour will not bring sudden death.
You just think it will.
These fees would have gone up no matter what our legislator did, at Pima College and at the UofA. Our colleges are driven by greed now days not by educating our future.
Too bad the belt tightening doesn’t apply to private prisons or school vouchers, too. It’s much easier to take from people that can’t fight back than it is to find an actual solution to the problem. After the legislature gets done wiping out the non-rich, who will they turn on next?
There won’t be any new jobs because no one wants to hire an uneducated workforce. Too bad the Republicans running things in this state haven’t figured that out, despite all the crayon drawings illustrating this fact.
Enrollment has been down and programs have been subpar and so students have to bear the cost? All talk about sensitivity to student families is all talk and not sincere when the action is quite the contrary. Why not eliminate admin positions at Community Campus where a handful of students actually take classes and have those duplicate admin positions spread out to similar positions at East and Northwest that are smaller campuses take over those admin responsibilities or those admin fat, such as Assistant Vice Chancellors under the Provost Office.
So now the board will increase property tax once again and invest it in beefing up programs for international students to come. Already there is an annual cost of $100k per year for a VP position to supposedly run a program whose feasibility is unknown. They are spending our taxdollars on a potential investment with a market feasibility that is unknown. But hey, its taxpayers money only right? Will these foreign students really come to an institution whose accreditation is “On Notice” and programs that are not meeting industry standards, thus unable to place students into jobs? Layers and layers of admin cost in Enrollment Management at $100k plus salaries each per year on top of consultants hired to figure out how to pump up enrollment. Why pay these admin cost if you need to hire consultants to do the job or vice versa? How’s the enrollment so far?