Tuition and fee hikes at Georgia’s technical colleges may lay bare just how important the schools are to educating and retraining the state’s workforce.
The Technical College System of Georgia announced Thursday that students will pay 13 percent more in tuition next semester — from $75 per credit hour to $85 per credit hour.
Students who take a full 15-credit course load will pay $1,275 in January, a $150 increase over what they pay now. In addition, they’ll pay at least $50 a semester in new fees.
“We certainly are not happy with the fact we have to increase tuition,” said David McCulloch, vice president for economic development at Gwinnett Technical College. “It’s challenging because we know a lot of our students are working at the same time they’re pursuing” a higher education.
The timing of the increased costs couldn’t be worse. Technical colleges, already struggling amid cuts in state funding, are under a mandate from the governor to graduate more students by 2020 to meet projected workforce needs.
And in a still-shaky economy, the schools can’t lessen their efforts — lauded as “invaluable” by the state’s top labor official — to retrain workers for better jobs.
“We need our technical college system funded at the right level because right now they’re our secret weapon,” Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. “When we find an individual who needs additional training, they’re always right there. And they’re always real good about meeting with employers and changing their curriculum to meet that skill-set need.”
About half of the system’s 170,000 students are older than 26. Technical colleges have seen a surge over the last several years of underemployed or jobless Georgians looking to update their skills or qualify in an entirely different field, system spokesman Mike Light said.
Students in the system’s 25 schools are employing creative and traditional tactics to offset what they must pay. Campus officials share anecdotes about increased textbook-sharing among students and greater borrowing of books and study materials from on-campus resource centers.
At Chattahoochee Technical College in Marietta, officials said they expect to see more students applying for federally funded work/study jobs to supplement their financial aid.
Officials from other campuses said they anticipate increased applications for student loans and will steer students to other types of aid as well, including state and federal grants.
Yet unknown is whether tuition and fee hikes will scare away students at a time when they need new skills more than ever. The state’s unemployment rate, at 9.3 percent, is higher than the national average.
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