The Virginia Community College System State Board voted last week to raise the tuition rate by six percent at all community colleges throughout the Commonwealth. The decision was the fourth step in a six-part series of steady increases laid out by the board in its Dateline 2009 plan for Virginia's community colleges, said Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System.
According to the board's Web site, the tuition rate was raised to $76.65 per credit hour and the technology fee to $3.50 per credit hour for in-state students. This brings average tuition and mandatory fees for a 30 credit-hour semester to a total of $2,404.50, starting this summer.
"This is to make sure we have the highest quality we can offer to students," DuBois said.
Dateline 2009 includes plans to steadily increase tuition over time to avoid the spikes in tuition that community colleges faced in the past, said Mark Graham, vice-chair of Virginia's State Board for Community Colleges. The problem was especially acute when tuition authority was returned to governing boards after former Gov. Jim Gilmore froze tuition rates for four years during his administration, Graham added.
Other goals for the system include increasing community college professor pay to fall in the 60th percentile nationwide, eliminating the enormous maintenance backlog that has built up throughout the system and preventing a tuition rise exceeding the cost of Virginia public four-year institutions by half, Graham said.
"The problem we have is, we have a system that celebrated its 40th anniversary, and a lot of these facilities are 40 years old," Graham said. "We are steadily increasing [tuition] over time to make up some ground we lost in the past to get to where we need to be."
According to DuBois approximately 230,000 students are currently seeking post-secondary degrees from one of Virginia's 23 community colleges. "Today, 50 percent of college students entering the public sector are enrolling in community colleges," DuBois said.
Greg Roberts, University associate dean of admissions, said it is hard to say how this increase will affect transfer enrollment at the University.
Despite the increased tuition, "the community college route is still a bargain," he added.
Roberts said although many students attend community college for financial reasons, there are other motivations as well. He noted examples such as students who transition back from serving in Iraq, having a child or job or who may use community college as a stepping stone for improvement after having "underachieved" in high school.
Even as enrollment increases at community colleges across the Commonwealth, Roberts said administrators have been surprised to find community college applications for transfer to the University slightly down this year.
This dip in applications also follows the implementation of a guaranteed admissions program in which admission into the University's College of Arts & Sciences is guaranteed to those Commonwealth community college students who meet certain academic requirements after receiving an associate's degree.
"It [the guaranteed admissions program] has only been in place for a year; however, we were still a little surprised that this year we were down in community college applications ... We probably won't see the benefit for two to three years down the road," Roberts said.
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