Hayley Smith
Editor-in-Chief
Next fall, students can expect to pay a slightly higher price for their classes and campus living at Butler Community College. The Board of Trustees approved a $7 per credit hour increase to student fees, which will be implemented in the fall semester of 2017.
Some of the main factors that pushed this fee increase, according to Associate Vice President of Research and Effectiveness Gene George, are the desire to restructure academics to make them more successful, the need to maintain an enrollment base and be competitive and the need to balance revenues. This is one of the largest increases in many years.
“Tuition has not increased this much, this is about a seven percent increase on fees, and that’s about as big as it has been in the last 10 to 15 years,” George said. “There have been some years where we haven’t raised tuition at all, and there have been some years where we actually decreased tuition.”
Although this increase may seem like a large number, George explained that the college had to find a way to balance revenue and decided the increase on fees would be beneficial. This is expected to bring about $1 million in revenue to the college.
“There’s a lot of public pressure for colleges to put more of the cost on students, raise tuition, raise fees, that kind of thing,” George said. “We really feel that pressure, but we also want to maintain our sensitivity towards what that means, what the impact of that is on our students and we are very diligent at looking at how those price increases might affect our students’ ability to attend college and how that would affect their ability to finish a program of study.”
For students who reside on campus, there is a 3.3 percent increase on the housing and meal plan. According to Vice President of Student Services Bill Rinkenbaugh, the meal plan for the 2017-18 school year will cost $1,980 for the meal plan consisting of 19 meals a week. The rates for the residence halls will be $2,920 per year for West Hall; $4,020 per year for East Hall and Cummins Hall; and $4,320 for the apartments on campus. Students living in West, East and Cummins are required to have a meal plan, but students living in the on campus apartments are not.
“The fee increases are being put into place to offset the rising costs of operations at the college,” Rinkenbaugh said. “For the residence halls, it includes the increased costs of the meals as well as increase in utilities and operations.”
Some students are wary about this price increase.
“If they need to raise the prices, then raise the prices,” freshman Meghan Heywood said. “But I think they also need to expect a decline in the amount of residents due to the raise in the prices.”
According to both George and Rinkenbaugh, Butler Community College does all that it can to ensure that costs are kept low for students, and even with this increase, it remains relatively inexpensive.
“I can assure you we did not take the increase in student fees lightly,” Rinkenbaugh said. “We understand that this is a significant increase, but we are committed to providing quality instruction in smaller classes with all of the additional services at our various locations. Even with this increase, Butler continues to be one of the most affordable educational options for our students in the region.”