The average student at Columbia Basin College will pay about $5 more per credit hour starting this fall under a new tuition rate set Thursday.
The Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges at a meeting in Walla Walla voted to raise tuition by 7 percent for all colleges in the system. That's the full increase allowed by the state Legislature in a bill adopted in 2009 to help offset state budget cuts.
The rate for Washington resident students at CBC will increase from about $80 per credit hour for the 2009-10 school year to $85.50 per credit hour.
Students also pay a $3 technology fee and $1.65 comprehensive fee per credit hour. Those are unchanged for the coming year.
A student taking 15 credit hours, or three classes, will pay $1,096 per quarter, or $3,287 a year.
That's an increase of just under $200 for a year from the 2009-10 rate.
The tuition increase is supposed to offset cuts to college and university funding made by the Legislature in the supplemental budget adopted in April and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday.
The community and technical college system as a whole lost $37.7 million in operating money for the remainder of the 2009-11 biennium.
CBC President Rich Cummins said that amounted to a $1.5 million cut for CBC on top of more than $3 million cut in the original budget adopted last year.
The original cuts led the community college to eliminate its fire science day classes, and human services, paralegal and auto body programs.
Cummins said the college still is looking at how CBC will make the latest round of cuts and should have more information within the next two weeks.
The tuition increase is expected to bring in about $400,000 for the college -- less than one-third of the money lost from the state allocation.
The board also voted in Walla Walla on Thursday to increase tuition for classes leading to applied bachelor's degrees by 14 percent.
Tuition for nonresidents will go up by the same dollar amount, but not as high a percentage because the board wants to keep out-of-state tuition competitive with nearby Western states.
