Itawamba, East Mississippi community colleges not raising tuition this school year
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Two of North Mississippi’s largest community colleges will not be raising tuition for the upcoming academic school year.
Both Itawamba Community College and East Mississippi Community College will not be increasing tuition for students for the 2022-2023 academic year.
“Our board and of course, the college as a whole, is always excited when we can keep our price point down and keep our costs down for our students,” says ICC president Dr. Jay Allen. “It’s not always a given that we can do that.”
After a year of inflation and economic upheaval in 2022, both school presidents felt now was not the time to burden students with higher tuition costs.
“Our board felt that it was very important to keep our tuition level and we were able to build a budget and do just that,” Dr. Allen says.
“Student debt is a problem in this country,” says EMCC president Dr. Scott Alsobrooks. “We were able to manage very well through the pandemic through the help of the Higher Ed. Relief Fund.”
Dr. Alsobrooks says that in fact, they still have some of that Higher Education Relief Funding that they will be dispersing to students in the fall.
“It’s been in the several hundreds (of dollars per student) each semester and I would expect it to remain somewhere in that level,” he says.
While Dr. Allen says that starting in the fall, they will be streamlining fees for both part-time and full-time students.
“Our affordability really provides a path for so many Mississippians to get into the collegiate environment, complete a degree to go straight to the workforce or to transfer onto a (four-year) university,” he says.
Both schools are still accepting applications for the fall semester.
