For the second consecutive year, Montgomery College will raise tuition rates.
The college’s trustees recently authorized tuition increases across the board — $4 per credit hour for in-county, $8 for in-state and $12 for out-of-state students.
These changes represent a roughly 3% increase, and will result in per-hour tuition rates of $132 for in-county students, $269 for students from Maryland, and $374 for out-of-state students. The increases will take effect in the fall. The same tuition rate increases were implemented at the beginning of the 2018-2019 academic year.
“The decision was a combination of several needs: To continue to be fiscally prudent, advance excellence in our classrooms and to work to close the achievement gap,” Montgomery College President DeRionne Pollard said in a statement.
The tuition increase was included in the college’s $313 million fiscal 2020 budget proposal, now being considered by the County Council. The college requested $145 million of its funds come from the county budget, but County Executive Marc Elrich proposed allocating $142 million – no increase from this year’s budget – to the college, citing declining enrollment.
Data shows the college’s enrollment has decreased by about 25% in the past six years. Enrollment decreased by 4.6% between spring 2018 and this spring, with 20,015 students enrolled.
There are 17,858 in-county students, 1,019 in-state students and 983 out-of-state currently taking credit courses at Montgomery College, according to a college spokesman.
During a County Council committee meeting last week, Pollard said the college’s enrollment trends are consistent with most community colleges across the nation.
“College is still cost-prohibitive, so when you give a student a choice between going to work and going to school, they will go to work,” Pollard said, adding about 65 percent of Montgomery College’s students attend classes part-time.
“For an organization our size, we may be talking up to three fewer students in a class each semester, but I still have tens of thousands of students we need to serve whose lives are just as complex, if not more so, with needs we need to respond to,” she said.
Caitlynn Peetz can be reached at caitlynn.peetz@moco360.media
