News
April 06, 2004
Contact: Lorna Sutton, Director of Communications, SBCTC, 360-704-4310
Two-year college board to distribute new enrollments and capital funds, increase tuition at special meeting Thursday, April 8
OLYMPIA – New enrollment slots provided by the 2004 Legislature will be distributed to two-year colleges Thursday, April 8, at a special meeting of the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. The board is also expected to increase tuition by an average of 7 percent for 2004-05 and allocate nearly $46 million for facilities.
The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. at South Seattle Community College.
The colleges will receive a total of 1,174 full-time slots for general enrollments and 256 new high-demand enrollment slots, targeted to specific programs identified by the Legislature as most needed in the job market.
General enrollments may be used across all instructional programs as determined by the colleges. Colleges apply for high-demand slots, which are then assigned by the State Board. Most of this year’s high-demand enrollments have been earmarked for nursing and other health-related fields, although some will go to technology, and enology and viticulture (winemaking and grape growing).
Higher education enrollment in Washington significantly exceeds the number of slots funded by the state, which prompted the governor and the Legislature to fund more students in this year’s supplemental budget.
For 2004-05, community and technical colleges will receive about 1,700 new full-time slots, including some to be distributed later this year for apprenticeship and worker retraining programs. However, in 2002-03 they served the equivalent of 12,500 full-time students more than the state funded and are on pace to do the same this year. That is nearly 10 percent more than the state is funding the colleges to serve.
“The colleges have been doing everything possible to serve the needs of students and the businesses in their communities, to provide opportunity while maintaining high quality education,” said Earl Hale, the State Board’s executive director. “This new funding from the Legislature will make a difference, even though there is still a significant gap between the number of students being served and the state funding level.”
The 2004 Legislature also increased the community and technical college capital budget to upgrade and expand facilities at several campuses. Most of the funds will be used to accelerate projects that are already in some phase of development.
Two colleges – Bellingham Technical College and Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen – will receive funding to construct buildings ahead of schedule. Several others will be given funds to design projects that would otherwise have been in the “predesign” phase this biennium.
The State Board will consider a proposed tuition increase that would result in a community college student who is taking 15 credits paying about $771 per quarter in this fall, compared to the current level of $714. Part-time students taking from one to 10 credits would pay $69.35 per credit, up from $66.15.
The average increase for all students would be 7 percent, as authorized by the Legislature in the 2003-05 operating budget. The Legislature gave the State Board the authority to increase resident student tuition by an average of 7 percent in each year of the biennium to make up for some of the cuts in the system’s operating budget. Tuition was increased by that percentage last year.
Tuition for the state’s 29 community colleges is set by the State Board, although some local fees vary. The five technical colleges have different tuition structures but are limited to the same percentage increase as the community colleges.
The meeting will be in Board Room (Room 3) of the Robert Smith Building at South Seattle Community College, 6000 16th Ave. SW.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the State Board will be May 5-6 at Yakima Valley Community College.
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The meeting agenda and background materials are posted on the State Board Web site at: http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/general/a_board/. View charts showing enrollment distribution and capital projects by college.
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