College Trustees increase tuition
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
AUGUSTA — The board of trustees of the Maine Community College System recently voted to increase tuition at the state’s seven community colleges by $2 a credit hour for the coming academic year, a 2.4 percent increase.
This is the first increase in two years and will mean that a full-time Maine student taking 30 credit hours will see tuition rise by $60, to $2,580 a year.
Confronting a potential $2.3 million deficit in 2011-12 — the result of increased operating costs and level funding from the state — the board nonetheless sought to hold the tuition increase to a minimum. With the new charges, Maine students will pay $86 per credit hour in 2011-12, up from $84 the previous year. Out-of-state tuition will increase from $168 per credit hour to $172, or $5,160 for a full-time student.
“Our students’ ability to pay is limited,” said MCCS President John Fitzsimmons in announcing the vote. “Even modest increases can have an impact, causing students to cut back on the number of classes they take or to drop out altogether.
“This modest tuition increase seeks to strike a balance between the financial health of our institutions and our students’ ability to pay,” he said, noting that tuition at Maine’s seven community colleges will remain the lowest in New England, and that three quarters of full-time students are likely to qualify for some amount of financial aid.
Northern Maine Community College President Timothy Crowley said while unfortunate, the tuition increase is necessary.
“Any increase at this time is going to have a negative impact on peoples’ ability to access higher education,” he said. “However, if we don’t do something [like increase tuition] then we have to reduce what we’re providing anyway. Last year we had to reduce the number of students we could take in our wind power program because we didn’t have the resources to address the additional 18 students who wanted in the program; we couldn’t serve them because we didn’t have the faculty or the supplies.
“There is a point you get to in your budget where you just can’t serve any more students without some kind of recourse,” said Crowley. “The tuition increase is uncomfortable, but I think it’s the right thing to do at this time. We haven’t raised tuition in two years; all of our other costs have gone up, so we had to make some sort of change.”
Crowley said around 2,000 students attend NMCC. Despite the tuition increase, he anticipates that enrollment will not be negatively impacted.
