8.5 percent tuition increase keeps Kirkwood 'status quo'

CEDAR RAPIDS - Students at Kirkwood Community College will pay $10 per credit hour more in tuition next year, after the Kirkwood board of trustees unanimously approved the new rate Thursday.

That's an 8.5 percent increase in the rate, and it will bring the per-credit-hour tuition rate to $128 next year. For an average student who takes 12 credits per semester, the increase amounts to $240 more for the academic year.

“It's a terrible thing that I have to recommend,” Kirkwood President Mick Starcevich said. “This just really maintains the status quo.”

The larger increase is needed, Starcevich said, because state general aid is expected to remain flat and enrollment is expected to decline next fall. As of fall enrollments on Thursday, credit hours were down 14.6 percent. Kirkwood officials are projecting a 7.5 percent decrease in credit hour enrollments for the fall. Each 1 percent of credit hour decrease is a loss of nearly $471,000. Each $1 in additional tuition per credit hour brings in $399,000.

Even with the $10 increase, Kirkwood likely will remain the lowest credit hour rate among Iowa's community colleges, Starcevich said.

“It's getting tougher to do the number of programs that we do at the quality that we do, at the rate that we charge,” he told the board.

If state funding decreases instead of remaining flat for next year, Starcevich said he will have to come back to the board in the fall to recommend another tuition increase for the spring semester.

Tuition dollars will make up 63 percent of Kirkwood's budget next year, with state aid expected to be less than 25 percent, he said.

“That is a sad state of affairs,” Starcevich said. “They have, I think, left us out.”

With the increase in tuition, Kirkwood also will increase the amount it raises to fund scholarships, from $1.7 million this year to more than $2 million next year, he said.

In a bit of good news, the $960,000 in state funding that Kirkwood lost to mid-year budget cuts this year will be restored by the state, in two payments to the college in May and June. About $450,000 of that will be used to backfill the cuts that Kirkwood made, and the remainder will go into savings, Starcevich said.

In another board news, the trustees voted to delay a planned $22 million renovation to Linn Hall, after five bids came in significantly higher than expected.

The lowest bid came in at nearly $25 million, and $22 million was the “drop dead bottom line,” Starcevich said.

Kirkwood leaders will put a $46.5 million, 15-year bond issue to voters on Sept. 13, and part of that bond issue would fund the Linn Hall renovation. Given the high bids, officials think it would be prudent to make sure the bond issue passes, and then put it out for bid again in an attempt to get lower bids by possibly changing some things about the project, he said.

Completed in 1969 as the first permanent Kirkwood building, Linn Hall has 200,000 square feet of classrooms, labs and offices. The building needs classroom and lab upgrades, structural upgrades and repairs and a new HVAC system and new pipes, Starcevich said. With the renovation, Linn Hall will become the math, science and health sciences building, he said.