Five Percent Increase in Tuition
post a comment | posted Feb 12
If you are coming back to Manatee Community College for spring courses, it is more than likely that you have heard about the five percent increase in tuition. Florida residents will be charged an extra $4.13 cents per credit hour or $49.56 cents for twelve credit hour and non-resident students will be charged $14.09 cents per credit hour or $169.08 cents for 12 credit hours starting in the spring semester. As distressing as it may seem, the facts should be heard before making a harsh conclusion about the increase.
The discussion of increasing tuition by five percent has been spoken of for about a year. It came up during the legislative session last year and the legislative body put it forward as an approved action. However, the governor decided to veto it. Since then, though, there have been extensive discussions about whether or not they thought that the governor would accept it in the spring. He did eventually accept it.
Dr. Carol Probstfeld commented that she thought the five percent increase became more palatable to the governor when the state discovered that they had revenue problems and that they would have to cut their state funding organizations. When there wasn't any revenue coming from construction and property taxes, a five percent increase was needed to be reinstated for the spring because it became much more important when regular state funds were cut.
"I really think it was the right thing to do. It was necessary," said Probstfeld.
The revenue estimators at the Council of Presidents meeting in October said that the estimates that they received were less for August and September. They do not have the money they thought they would for this year and as a result there may be a second round of cuts for state agencies in the year that we are in for next year. A revenue estimating process is implemented several times throughout the course of the year and they are looking into property tax collections, housing starts, and how much money people are spending because of the sales tax on an ongoing basis and they are estimating that revenues are going to be less again in another year. However, Probstfeld said that community colleges hopefully will not be impacted by that but that the problems of this year are still trying to be balanced out.
"I empathize with students, having been a student for many years of my life and just finishing my doctoral degree. Every time tuition increased my heart just sunk," Dr. Probstfeld expressed. She also commented that this increase in tuition will allow MCC to continue to offer the variety of classes that it is offering now and to keep their technology up-to-date. However, if they had not gotten the increase they probably would have increased class sizes and reduced their number of offerings.
The governor tried to offset the impact of the increase in tuition to the students with the greatest financial need. He has asked community colleges to take a portion of the additional revenue that they will get at the end of spring semester to offer need based aid. MCC will be setting aside almost ten percent of the additional revenue that the 5% increase in tuition will give them as aid for students who have already qualified for the Pell Grant program, an educational federal grant program that provides need-based grants to undergraduate students with low-incomes to promote access to postsecondary education.
The Pell Grant program increased by $260 this year and will allow students who qualify for need-based aid to cover more than the additional cost of the five percent increase.
