Dive Summary:
- Faced with an almost 9% state funding cut for state colleges and universities—7.5% for community and technical colleges—nearly all of West Virginia's colleges and universities will raise tuition next academic year.
- West Virginia State University will see the largest increase at 9%, or $490, but Higher Education Policy Commission Chancellor Paul Hill notes that the state's colleges have tried to avoid large tuition price jumps by cutting operating costs—and three schools were even able to cut costs by 4.5%.
- The largest increase among the state's community and technical colleges was 15%, and West Virginia Community and Technical College Council Chancellor James Skidmore has been questioned as to whether students are being priced out of going to college.
From the article:
... Skidmore answered that there is, in fact, a "problem in community colleges."
"But we're addressing it," he said. "We understand that there is a problem and we understand that students need loans to go to college, but we also understand that we need to keep down our loan default rates ... and we're working on that." ...