The Rising Costs of Education

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Tri-C Students Are Not the Only Ones to Feel the Increases; Does Everybody Have the Same Costs?

By Jeremy Hopkins
Western Campus Associate Editor

This past spring, Cuyahoga Community College released news most students don’t want to hear: the increased costs of classes. The costs of tuition at Tri-C have gone up, as have most classes across the country. The cost of a class at Tri-C is not wholly borne by the tuition charged, as approximately 28 percent of the revenue of running the school comes from Ohio programs, according to the information provided on the “Paying for college” page at the school’s website. This prompted an increase of the tuition for classes to $303.63 for a three-credit hour course at the “county resident” rate, or just over 3 percent. Out of county or state rates were also raised by the same dollar amount, but not the same percentage.

Interestingly enough, while Tri-C is one of the largest community colleges in Ohio, and is known throughout national community college educational circles, Tri-C is not among the list of schools with the lowest tuition or fees. In fact, for the 2012-2013 school year, the cost of tuition went up by 7.3 percent for in-county students, taking the school over the national average of $2,905 from 2011 according to the U.S. Department of Education and published on the College Affordability and Transparency Center website. (Further data does show Tri-C was under that benchmark before 2012 for in-county students.)

Some disturbing information that was published along with the increase in tuition was an increase in the cost of books and supplies: an increase of 20 percent, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics.  So it’s not just your imagination that the cost of textbooks went up.

Pulling up data for Sinclair Community College, the school in Ohio with the lowest net prices on the College

Students outside Western Campus Photo by Jeremy Hopkins
Students outside Western Campus
Photo by Jeremy Hopkins

Affordability and Transparency Center’s lists, this increase in books becomes very telling as their costs not only went down, but they also are 67 percent of the costs of books and supplies at Tri-C. Per data on the NCES site, none of the schools with the lowest tuition were in Ohio.

And while Sinclair’s student count is listed at 21,106 to Tri-C’s 30,853, the student-to-teacher ratios are very similar: 19 to one compared to our 21 to one. What is not clear is whether they have two thirds the size of the budget and costs.

The Voice wants to know what you think of the costs of education. Leave a comment, or email Jeremy Hopkins at a.hopkins001@tri-c.edu.

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