Sinclair Community College President Steven Johnson said the college might raise tuition, although nothing has been officially announced.<\/p>\n
Johnson said, should the school raise tuition, he\u2019d like to raise it 5-7 percent, if allowed, in order to maintain the current level of quality.\u00a0 However, should the school actually raise tuition, the state government might place a 3.5 percent cap on tuition increases.\u00a0 If that occurs, Johnson said the school might have to turn students away.<\/p>\n
Over the last three years, enrollment at the college has risen 30 percent.\u00a0 Johnson said due to the recovering economy, that number should level off, but because the state government is planning on cutting the funding going to colleges, the school will need to replace that lost income.<\/p>\n
Right now, the state provides 40 percent of Sinclair\u2019s income, according to Johnson, and Sinclair expects the state to cut 12 percent of that soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get a 12 percent reduction, you start working through some options,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cOne is cutting students, cutting classes, eliminating services; in other words, lowering the quality, and that\u2019s just not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said that the 30 percent increase in enrollment signifies a need for Sinclair in the Dayton area, and Sinclair takes that into consideration when making decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, right there at that level, there\u2019s a student need,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd if we cut back and said sorry, we don\u2019t want you, you need to leave because we don\u2019t have room for you, we don\u2019t have the money, we think that\u2019s the wrong thing to do.\u00a0 So we don\u2019t want to affect students by limiting their ability to go to school because we eliminate classes and services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said that Sinclair wants to maintain the current quality.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing we\u2019re trying to make sure we don\u2019t affect is access,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cAnother thing is then the quality. And, you know, Sinclair has a reputation\u2014well earned and well deserved\u2014of being high quality.\u00a0 It has the reputation and students have benefited from a quality of services that are a bit different than you would find at an average community college. And so, we don\u2019t want to only just have access to protect, we also want to protect quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c Well, why do we have quality? Well, we have good professors and we pay for them.\u00a0 We have a good library and we pay for it,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cWe have good tutoring and student support services.\u00a0 We have financial aid processing and testing so that students get placement tested into the right levels.\u00a0 All of those things cost money, and we pay that money. We pay to have that quality. And we don\u2019t just do average; we strive to be above-average.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sinclair\u2019s third area of concern is the price.\u00a0 Johnson said he knows that is what students are thinking about.\u00a0 But, he said in-county students are only paying about 25 percent of what it costs to go to school (because the other two-thirds is picked up by the state funding and the Montgomery County levy).\u00a0 Johnson said the school prefers it that way because it means accessibility.<\/p>\n
Johnson also said that Sinclair\u2019s tuition is 20 percent lower than the national average and 40 percent lower than the average Ohio community college.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d rather not have to raise it at all,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cBut it looks like we\u2019re going to be on track to raise it.\u201d President Johnson said that Sinclair tries to balance the quality and accessibility with maintaining a low tuition, calling it \u201ca very difficult balancing act.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf not for the generosity of the Montgomery County taxpayers to provide that tuition support to Montgomery County students, it\u2019d be very difficult to maintain that access and affordability,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n Johnson said that Sinclair puts more funds into \u201cdirect instruction and into student services than the average community college in Ohio.\u201d\u00a0 He also said the school spends less on administration and facilities than average.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might say, oh my gosh, we have so many facilities, how can you spend less?\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cWell, when you look at it on a per-student basis it works out to be pretty favorable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe point is, we\u2019re pretty efficient,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re a pretty efficient college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sinclair Community College President Steven Johnson said the college might raise tuition, although nothing has been officially announced. Johnson said, should the school raise tuition, he\u2019d like to raise it 5-7 percent, if allowed, in order to maintain the current level of quality.\u00a0 However, should the school actually raise tuition, the state government might place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1E8","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6366,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6332\/revisions\/6366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBalancing quality with keeping tuition low<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n