On March 12, vice president of student services Deneece Huftalin told students that they can expect between a one and eight percent increase in tuition for the 2013-2014 school year.
For a full time student, a one percent increase would result in an extra $12 in tuition per semester while and eight percent rise would result in an extra $112.
The final numbers will not be available until sometime next week, with official ratification coming on March 29 when the Board of Regents will meet at the Miller Campus in an open forum that the public is invited to attend.
“It’s a forecast because the legislative session is still in progress,” said Huftalin.
The tuition increase is decided in two tiers
The first tier is the Board of Regents who decides on tuition increases for all eight higher education institutions in the state. Those funds are then used for legislative and regent priorities.
The second tier is decided on by the individual institutions. In the last two years, SLCC has not instituted any increase in the second tier.
“All of our institutions are fairly cognizant of not outpricing our students,” said Huftalin.
The Board of regents is considering between a zero and five percent increase; SLCC is looking at zero to three percent depending on what the regents do.
Huftalin said that it is highly unlikely that the regents will decide on a zero percent increase
Salt Lake Community College is funded about 51 percent with state funds and 49 percent through tuition. According to Huftalin, this type of funding is more like research university funding at a national level.
On average, community colleges receive 70 percent of their budget from the states and only 30 percent comes from student tuition.
“We ought to be resourcing public education in a different way,” said Huftalin. “We ought to be taking the burden off the student pocket book.”
Students can reduce their overall tuition costs by going to SLCC full time and taking 18 credits a semester, which cost the same as 12 credits.
Students can also get involved at the legislative level to work on reducing tuition
“Students need to call on elected officials to fund higher education at a higher level,” said Huftalin.
SLCC expects there to be a drop of about 500 full time equivalent students in the coming year because of the improving economy and the change in missionary age for the LDS church.
SLCC concentrates on six goals: career and technical education, general education and transferring, developmental education, adult and continuing education, community services and service learning and business and economic development.
“A community should have a strong comprehensive community college that provides higher education to all in the community,” said Huftalin.
