Education, Careers & Professional News
Fee Increase Proposed at Howard For Construction
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Fast-growing Howard Community College is seeking its fourth tuition increase in four years, partly to support an ambitious building program that has continued despite a drop in state funding.
The proposal, expected to be formally approved by the college`s board of trustees in the spring, would take effect July 1, increasing tuition from $100 per credit hour to $105. HCC charges the highest student tuition among Maryland`s 16 community colleges.
“Raising tuition is always a last resort,” said Lynn C. Coleman, the college`s vice president of administration and finance. The college`s growing pains, she said, resulted from rapid enrolments increases even as state assistance to community colleges shrank.
To offset the sting of the tuition increase, HCC officials have added more than $51,000 in scholarships to the college`s $57 million budget, bringing total scholarship funds to $643,550. Figures from the Maryland Higher Education Commission show that state funding per community college student enrolled full time reached $2,186 in 2003, but has since declined 16 percent to $1,832. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has proposed a 4 percent increase in state aid to community colleges for the 2005-06-budget year, with funding per full-time student rising to $1,905.
During the same period, the number of HCC students enrolled in classes for credit increased 32 percent, with 6,711 full- and part-time students registered last fall. “Certainly, students do not like tuition increases at all,” said Alex Nowodazkij, 21, an international student who is president of the Student Government Association. “There is resentment among students.”
Meanwhile, the college is moving forward with another project – a $28 million student services building that, if funded, would be started this summer. The student services building, is due to open in 2007, would complete a campus quad that has emerged amid the construction. The building boom may persist with two more projects envisioned in the college`s master plan. They are a continuing education building, on which design work would begin in 2008, and an allied health services instructional building in 2010.