Gov. Jay Nixon was in southwest Missouri on Jan. 25 to applaud leaders of two area community colleges for their decisions to keep tuition increases below $5 per credit hour for the 2011–12 school year. A day earlier, presidents and chancellors of the state’s 12 community colleges met in Jefferson City to discuss funding issues.
Officials at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield and Crowder College in Neosho said yesterday that the state’s community colleges have committed to cap tuition hikes in the wake of the governor’s recommended
7 percent funding cut to Missouri’s public colleges and universities starting July 1. School officials had expected a larger cut.
“Affordability is one of the greatest strengths of our state’s community colleges,” said Hal Higdon, Missouri Community College Association chairman and Ozarks Technical Community College president, in a news release. “We think that our relatively low cost, together with the high quality of the programs we offer, has led to the dramatic enrollment increases community colleges have experienced.”
The state association said
last spring that community college enrollment was up 13 percent from the spring 2009 semester, led by Crowder College’s 22 percent year-to-year rise.
Last week,
OTC started its spring semester up 16 percent with 13,220 students enrolled.
OTC’s current
in-district tuition is $81 per credit hour. The school’s spokesman could not be reached by deadline to say when the board of trustees would vote on the tuition rates.
“While tuition has skyrocketed in other states, that has not been the case here in Missouri,” Nixon said in the release. “To compete for the jobs of the 21st century, education beyond high school is becoming increasingly critical, and Missouri’s community colleges prepare our students to move directly from the classroom to the work force.”
Nixon, who last week was named chairman of the National Governors Association’s Education, Early Childhood and Workforce Committee, also called for expanding the state’s A+ scholarship program to provide scholarships to high-achieving students from low-income families who attend schools that have not earned the A+ designation. Currently, the program offers scholarships to qualifying graduates A+ designated high schools.[[In-content Ad]]
