Tuition at Mississippi Delta Community College will increase this fall to $3,060, a nearly 17 percent rise over the current figure.
MDCC’s president, Dr. Larry Nabors, said state budget cuts of $1.75 million over the last two years have forced the move, despite cost-cutting measures at all three campuses.
Mississippi Delta Community Colleges operates in Moorhead, Greenwood and Greenville, serving some 2,400 students.
“Raising tuition was something we really worked on to try to avoid as much as we could,” Nabors said this morning. “We laid off eight employees this year and didn’t fill five or six positions that were vacated when someone retired or resigned.
“We’re trying to control costs as much as we can, but the extent of budget cuts we’ve had have forced us to raise tuition.”
Scholarships and financial aid will offset higher tuition rates for some students at MDCC and at other junior and community colleges across the state that also are raising tuition.
According to an Associated Press report, the average annual prices for tuition and fees at Mississippi’s community and junior colleges will rise statewide, on average 13 percent, as a result of state budget cuts that start next year.
Those cuts total about $28 million.
Mississippi’s eight public universities are raising tuition by 6.6 percent in the fall, according to the AP report.
Statewide, tuition is rising faster than inflation and income. Community colleges cost on average 3.1 percent of median family income in 2000; that figure rose to 6.4 percent in 2016.
Nabors said MDCC students on scholarship and students with federal Pell Grants, for which a large portion of the student population qualifies, will likely receive enough financial aid to continue covering tuition and books.
For those students who have neither scholarships nor Pell Grants, Nabors said the Mississippi Delta Community College Foundation has some funding that can be extended for help in emergency situations.
Like many other junior and community colleges across Mississippi, MDCC has seen a decline in enrollment over the last few years as the economy improved and unemployment numbers declined.
“That’s something you see at community colleges,” he said. “When potential students can get a job, they often go to work instead of to school.”
Still, Mississippi’s community colleges provide important vocational training and associate degree programs that often lead to four-year degrees at state universities. In low-income areas such as the Mississippi Delta, they are often a student’s only direct line to a college education.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
