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Are Community Colleges Expensive?
By Centinel | May 16, 2008
The SacBee has an editorial praising the selection of Jack Scott as the new community college chancellor for the state of California. In the piece, this passage caught my eye:
With an economic downturn drawing more students, tough budget times driving higher fees and a need to weld California’s diverse population into an educated citizenry, community colleges need a champion who can bring people together around a new, more focused mission.
I’ve heard people worrying about “higher fees” for community college students a lot. No doubt fees are higher and have been growing in recent years. I just can’t help but ask: are they actually “high” or are the fees just growing? Let’s look at the numbers…
Unless I’m reading the Fees & Tuition page wrong, PCC costs $20 per unit. Citrus College appears to indicate the same thing. Let’s assume the average community college student needs to take four classes, at four units per class. That’s 16 times 20: a full semester costs $320 (please someone correct me if my math is wrong). Sure, there are other expenses, but I’d sore-pressed to see how someone couldn’t afford to go to community college. So, when people talk about “increasing fees,” I think we should remember that it’s the difference between ultra-affordable and affordable, not a game of squeezing poor students for all their worth.
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Topics: Main Page, Education, Pasadena |
May 16th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Typically, you’d be taking five courses at three units/course for fifteen total units, or $300 in fees, which is actually less than you figured. But then each campus would have additional parking, health and student activity fees, etc. Then add an additional $80-$100 per course for books. Suddenly, you’re talking about some real money(As in, “rent money,” two or three times a year).
We still have “free” universal education through 12th grade. Go back about thirty years, and it was basically free to go to community college, and fees for the Cal State system were nominal. Now, CSU is over $1000/quarter and community colleges are over $300/semester, before adding all those incidental fees and costs I mentioned above.
Have we decided that California doesn’t need to educate its workforce as much in 2008 as it did in 1978?
May 16th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
It’s not the fees that cost the student so much, it’s the price of textbooks. From one semester to the next the fat cat textbook publishers will update an edition, so students can’t help each other out by handing down a book—they just go out of date. Then there are these people that come around to buy the old textbooks–who don’t care if they are out of date (?) The money drain is on the books for students not on college fees.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:58 am
If students could earn a living wage while going to school, there wouldn’t be a problem. How is someone supposed to live and pay rent on minimum, and then fit school into that financial picture (not to mention a potentially hellish schedule)?
May 17th, 2008 at 7:00 am
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but upper income families I know are unabashedly supporting their kids not only all the way through undergrad but through graduate school as well. Sounds like the set up for an early mid-life crisis to me.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
On the other hand, there is a tax credit that pays for the first $1000 of college for the first two years. The CCC is not exploiting this free money from the federal government. What they should do is raise the cost of community college to at least $33 a unit, to cover the average full time student taking 30 units a year. Take the difference and pay for some of the instructionally related and campus fees. This way all middle class people win.