Correction: A previous version of this story stated a vote on a tuition increase had already been taken. It will be discussed this month.

During the Board of Educations last meeting in March of 2023, Clackamas Community College discussed increasing student tuition for the next academic year by $4 per credit, and a $2 increase in universal fees.

 An increase like $4 per credit for full-time students taking 15 credits, would be paying an extra $60 per term, $180 each year. The full amount would be a baseline fee of $1,815 per term, opposed to this year’s fee of $1,755. 

CCC tuition is $117 per credit, as of right now. The last meeting held in March of 2022, the Board voted to increase students’ tuition by $5 and to be set to take place after summer 2022, but the Board agreed to an increase of $6 to accommodate inflation and maintenance for the college’s rising costs. 

Clackamas Community College has discussed a vote to increase student tuition by $4 per credit and universal fees by $2 to address financial deficits. Graph provided by CCC.

According to Jeff Shaffer, Vice President of Finance, a $2 increase in general fees would help keep funds balanced due to enrollment dropping. An increase to CCC’s tuition would still remain lower than the average cost in both, general fees and tuition for community colleges in the Portland metro area. “We actually reduced the student technology fee by 50 cents right after COVID-19 because we decided that there were a lot of those fees that were being captured at the time…So we lowered it and we haven’t increased them since. So one of the things that we’re struggling with now, is they haven’t been raised since 2020.”

This year, the proposed increase is lower than last year. Meaning the college is starting to balance out financially, after the pandemic.

“The amount per credit decreases our amount of the forecast roughly by $200,000. For each dollar per credit that we changed the tuition and fees, that’s a $4 per credit increase. Tuition and fees would decrease our rear forecast by $800,000 for the next two years.” Shaffer said, discussing the school’s deficit.

Chis Groener, Zone 4 CCC representative in Oregon City, expressed concerns about the deficit. He said, “We can’t commingle or general fund any of that? It’s got to be directly out of the fees? We can pick up any deficits with other money?” Shaffer then replied, “You could say, let’s subsidize it by 20% Because it’s going into the red and we don’t want to increase that fee…we could commingle that with the general fund if you want to. We haven’t done that to date but it is an option.”

Students are paying $468 currently and if this proposal is granted, one four-credit class would cost $484 starting Fall Term 2023.