College Costs Major Concern Of Students
Financial concerns, from paying for college to job prospects, dominated the new-student experience in 2009, according to an annual survey on freshman attitudes. Some of the students’ concerns were driven by family finances. Another possible effect of the economic downturn was the change in the number of students who reported that they would pursue either majors or careers in business. When it comes to their studies, about 39% of freshmen said they would need tutoring or remedial courses while in college.
As the head of a consortium of community colleges, our mission is to access to affordable education as conveniently as possible. As such our consortium provides general education courses online to not only the students of our consortium colleges, but students all over the country seeking affordable, convenient classes online. Our tuition is $125 per credit hours, pretty inexpensive when you compare the cost per credit hour across the continuum of colleges and universities. However, our students still face a major financial hurdle, the cost of textbooks. In the average three credit courses (which would cost $375 in tuition) we ask our students to spend almost $160 on textbooks. Several courses in the sciences have textbook that cost over 60 percent of the cost of tuition.
We are struggling with this dilemma.
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