Kirkwood Community College increases tuition 3.3% for next fall

CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa residents attending Kirkwood Community College in the upcoming fall will pay $7 more than those enrolled in the 2023-2024 academic year — bringing the rate to $217 per credit hour, according to a proposal the board of trustees approved this month.

Non-resident tuition will increase to $290 from $281 — a 3.2 percent increase, just under the 3.3 percent increase for in-state students. Those increases are smaller than the 5 percent tuition increases Kirkwood imposed last academic year — when the Cedar Rapids-based community college implemented the second-steepest rate hike across Iowa’s 15 community colleges.

Only Northeast Iowa Community College — with its 5.3 percent, $11 increase — had a bigger bump than Kirkwood, which reported the second-highest in-state tuition rate in Iowa, behind only Hawkeye Community College’s $211 cost for in-state students.

Kirkwood for next fall is holding flat its $50 technology fee and its $400-per-credit hour rate for international students.

The average in-state tuition for the current budget year ending June 30 is $198 — which represented a 3.6 percent increase over the prior year.

The Kirkwood increases come as Iowa’s Board of Regents also is considering tuition hikes for the fall — 3 percent for in-state students at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University and 2 percent for in-state students at the University of Northern Iowa.

Revenue increases

A budget submitted to and approved by the State Board of Education this month showed Kirkwood expects its tuition revenue to increase next year to $52.3 million from $49 million in the current budget year and from $44.7 million in the 2022 budget year.

Total tuition revenue across all 15 community colleges is expected to swell to $310.4 million next year from $299.4 million in the current budget year and $272.5 million in fiscal 2022, according to the state budget.

Kirkwood — aligning with a statewide downward trend — saw its for-credit enrollment continue to drop in the 2023 academic year to 16,581 from 16,775 in 2022, according to the most recent Condition of Iowa’s Community College Report. That 2023 number is 37 percent below its peak of 26,222 in 2011.

But its joint enrollment — when high school students take courses concurrently before graduating — swelled to a high of 5,921, a 46-percent increase over the last decade.

And its noncredit enrollment — encompassing courses for personal enrichment, academic preparedness, and skill development — has continued to climb to 29,211 in 2023 from 23,809 in 2021.

Heading into the next budget year, lawmakers recently approved a $5.7 million increase in general appropriations for the 15 community colleges. Starting in July 2025, the community colleges collectively will start using a new distribution model for those appropriations that scraps the current complex algorithm and instead tasks the presidents and chancellors of the campuses to establish a funding formula annually that makes the most sense based on enrollment and other factors.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com