When it comes to spending money, I’m pretty sure everybody can agree that the less that is coming out of your pocket, the better. I couldn’t agree more. I’m always on the lookout for better deals, cheap deals or, you know, free stuff. So when I got word that Bellevue College may be rising the cost of tuition in the coming year, I wasn’t all too pleased. After delving a little bit deeper into the matter though, I’d have to say that it may be beneficial for our school.
One of the reasons that people decide to attend a community college is because it is so much cheaper than attending a university and you’re still getting quality education. An upside to BC increasing tuition is that it isn’t going to be a huge change. They plan on gradually raising the cost by $100 here as they opposed to $1,000 right off the bat.
As well as the fact that BC isn’t going to be making monumental changes to the financial cost of attending, tuition increase isn’t exactly something that anybody here has control over. The amount of tuition along with other school costs is decided by Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. Running the 2011-2012 school year, assuming you were a full-time college student, the average cost for a community college student to attend a school like BC was right around $3,500. For the 2012-2013, it was raised to a little over $4,000, according to the SBCTC.
Along with BC not being in charge of how and when tuition is raised, it’s no secret that the economic state of our country hasn’t been in its best shape. As a result of this, the government and state can decide where they want to cut funding. For some reason, money that is allotted for educational purposes always seems to shrink a little bit more with each passing year. In 2012, Washington cut per-student funding by 4%, making Washington the sixth most affected state out of all 50, the highest being Alaska at 5.7%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
While I think that it is unfair that the students of BC are being punished for things such as the recession and governmental choices, I believe that there is no way to avoid tuition increase and more money coming out of our pockets, your parent’s pockets or whoever is funding your education. I can’t say that it isn’t frustrating without lying, but when you stand back and look at things from an educated point of view, it’s nothing that BC or any of us students can fix. On the bright side of things, it’s nice that the increase will be somewhat more gradual than a big $1,000 surprise slap in the face.