East Mississippi Community College will have free tuition for the summer

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- College students dream of hearing the two words free tuition; now that dream is a reality as East Mississippi Community College is offering free classes this summer. The pandemic moved classes at EMCC online last summer, but now, the school wants an increase in enrollment and to ease students back into the classroom.

“Once they get back on campus, I feel like they will feel comfortable being back on campus with us and that they’ll actually want to go ahead and continue their education,” said East Mississippi Community College’s vice president of enrollment management Melanie Sanders.

East Mississippi Community College administrators believe more students will sign-up to continue their education if they don’t have to pay for tuition.

“I am excited for it to be free I wasn’t expecting that at all I’m going into nursing school and so I have to have that credit and I graduated early so I just have to have that credit,” said EMCC student Abigail Youngblood.

“When I was homeschooled we did year-round so it just kind of felt right to go from you know winter, spring, summer, and fall to just doing classes, and then when I heard they were free it was just an extra incentive or that little push to get me to do summer classes again,” said EMCC student Kailyn Willis.

The pandemic is offering EMCC an opportunity to help people get back in the classroom.

“We actually received some funding from the federal government and it’s specifically to be used for students that need some extra assistance coming back to college,” said Sanders.

Sanders said summer enrollment has already increased 60 percent over last year’s numbers.

“We wanted to reach out to our students that felt like they need to sit out for a little bit during the pandemic so that they could come back and we just wanted to make it an easier road for them,” said Sanders.

Students can take up to 12 credit hours. Classes like phlebotomy and heavy machinery are excluded from the free tuition but everything else is up for grabs.

“All of our for-credit classes so anything that would be career technical our academic classes. Anything for credit will be available”

Registration for summer classes is open until May 27, 2021 and classes will begin on June 1, 2021.