Governing board mulls over tuition hike for fall 2013

Jeff Moses

On March 26 there was an on campus forum about the Maricopa Community College District’s proposal for a fall 2013 tuition hike.

 “This year there is a proposal for a $5 per credit hour increase,” said MCCCD financial number two Gaye Murphy.

Though $5 dollars may seem like a small increase, “over an entire school year a student that was enrolled in 30 credit hours would have an annual cost of $2,430,” said Murphy, which is up from $2,280, which that same student would currently pay.

The tuition hike comes in response to the ever-lessoning amount of money Arizona is putting in to the district.

“At one time we got over 20 percent of our support from the state of Arizona, but in recent years that number has dropped, and since I’ve been here it dropped from 20 percent to 10 percent. We have lost over $60 million,” Murphy said, “with the Maricopa district most of our operating budget comes from property taxes.”

The tuition hike however is not to supplement regular operating costs, but is actually to help pay for new programs such as the seamless student experience, and One Maricopa.

“If we didn’t approve anything we could keep what we have now, the basic services that we have now. Like the district promised us two years ago that they wouldn’t increase any tuition, because we could keep the status quo for 5 years,” said Ray Arecco Executive Vice President of ASMCC.

Arecco also highlighted the fact that there are constitutional requirements from the State of Arizona to keep higher education as free as possible and suggested MCCCD lobbying the state legislature and going as far getting injunctions if those requirements were not met.

Murphy however believes the requirement to be “more of an ideal then it is prescriptive,” and also claimed “this is as free as it gets.”

Other areas that would benefit from the tuition increase are the president’s scholarship, and need based financial aid, both areas that directly benefit students.

The district is also hoping to make it so 60 percent of all credit hours are taught by board certified residential faculty as well as replacing the districts accounting system, which is more than 10 years old.

Another area getting a nearly $2.25 million bump is public safety district wide, though there has been no bump in the on campus crime rate.

“We are looking at increasing the number of our public safety officers,” said Murphy, “there’s just a difference with a trained public safety officer,” she continued, “it’s not so much about crime increase on the college campuses.”

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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