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Friday, May 20, 2011
Community colleges say 3.5 percent tuition cap is unfair
DAYTON — Sinclair Community College President Steven Johnson is participating in a statewide push to raise the proposed cap on tuition increases for Ohio’s 23 community colleges.
At stake are millions of would-be tuition dollars that could help offset a 9 percent drop in state subsidies for Ohio’s most affordable schools.
Johnson, and officials from community colleges across Ohio, are asking lawmakers to allow them to raise tuition by as much as $200 per full time student, instead of continuing the 3.5 percent cap currently in place for all public colleges and universities in the state. School leaders argue that a percentage cap makes it harder for less expensive schools to weather budget cuts.
“This will help us avoid a crisis in the future,” Johnson said.
Under the current proposal, Sinclair, which is the state’s cheapest college with a tuition of $2,304 per year, would get just $81 per full-time student. Miami University, the state’s most costly with a tuition of $12,654, would get $442 per full-timer - five times more than Sinclair.
Community college officials have the backing of a key education leader in the state — Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Jim Petro. “A monetary cap of $200 for community colleges would continue to keep community colleges in Ohio affordable without placing an undue burden on the institutions themselves,” Petro told the Ohio Senate finance committee, chaired by Chris Widener, R-Springfield, last week.
For Sinclair, a $200 per student increase translates to a 9 percent hike, but the college would still remain among the most affordable in Ohio. If approved the soonest students would see the increase would be the winter session of 2012.
Without the change, Johnson said, both access and quality could suffer. “Can we afford to reduce quality and cut enrollment as a community? I would say we cannot,” Johnson said. The school has seen a 30 percent increase in demand for services while cutting per student costs by 22 percent over the past decade, Johnson said.
Declining collection from a property tax levy that supports Sinclair plays largely into the need for the tuition increase. The college faces losing a total of $11 million in funding over the next two years from decreases in levy collections and state support, Johnson said.
Levies don’t come into play for schools like Clark State Community College where the funding situation isn’t as dire and officials hope to hold tuition increases to 2.4 percent, said president Karen Rafinski. Yet she supports the $200 cap to help schools like Sinclair weather multiple funding hits. “I can live with either one, for my colleagues I wish for the flexibility,” she said.
Community colleges statewide have seen double digit enrollment increases during the recession while state support per student enrolled has been declining for years, said Ron Abrams, president of the Ohio Association for Community Colleges.
Abrams is unsure if lawmakers will approve of the $200 cap because they have said they want to treat all schools equally. “This is a classic example of them treating us the same, but not equally,” he said.
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