This semester, tuition and fees at NIC have increased from last year’s level.
Last May, the board of trustees voted to raise tuition $5 per credit for Kootenai County residents and $8 per credit for students living outside Kootenai County.
Vice President of Finance and Business Affairs, Chris Martin, said that the increase was necessary to continue delivering quality education and meet the college’s budgetary needs for the upcoming fiscal year.
Martin also said that enrollment levels are not expected to change.
Many students did not realize the increase in tuition.
“I guess this is why I had to drop two courses,” premedical student Alessandra Cope, 19, said. “Why are they making this more expensive for students? I want to know where the money is going.”
Nursing student Tessa Murray, 19, said that she isn’t happy about the increase, but that she also isn’t surprised to hear that tuition is becoming more expensive.
“For me, I would have to know why,” Murray said. “It would have to be for a good reason for me to support it.”
Tuition was not the only extra cost. Other increased fees included a mandatory $100 per student, per semester, to help pay for the new $14.5 million recreation center to be built in 2016.
The research institute Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said that the state’s education funding cuts, occurring since 2009, have caused colleges to rely more heavily on student fees, federal grants, and taxes for funds to run.
For NIC, Martin said alternatives to raising tuition included more budget cuts and levying higher local property taxes.
Another additional expense for 2015 is the raised instructor wage law signed into effect by Governor Butch Otter earlier this year, which will raise instructors’ minimum salary from about $31,000 to $37,000 per year by 2019-20.
Martin said, “Before factoring in the impact of salary adjustments, the college reduced the operating budget by over $1.4 million from fiscal year 2015 to help offset adding additional costs to students.”
