Elgin Community College ending free tuition for some seniors

Elgin Community College has allowed residents age 60 and older to take courses without paying tuition. But with the summer term, tuition will be waived only for people older than 65 with relatively low incomes.

In response, nine ECC "seniors" showed up at Tuesday's board meeting to complain that they effectively are being thrown out of the school.

ECC President David Sam responded the change is necessary because the state budget impasse is exerting unprecedented financial pressure on the college. And he invited any ECC student - including those 60 and older - who has trouble paying for tuition to apply for financial aid.

Sam and college financial officers predict the change will increase the college's income by $100,000 a year, as senior students start paying tuition. But the students who spoke predicted that actually they will stop taking courses and their seats in the classroom will go empty.

Gene Burkart, an 81-year-old from Elgin, said that while getting over cancer and gall bladder ailments two years ago, "the first thing I did when I got out of the hospital was to enroll in a ceramics class. It helped me recover."

Cindy Hagerty, 68, of Elgin, said she now takes sculpture classes that will increase from $80 to $455 per semester. That, she said, will force her to drop out.

Arnold Kinast, an 81-year-old Hampshire resident who takes art classes, argued that older students have earned special treatment by paying taxes during their younger years.

Kinast said he has paid taxes to ECC since leaving the Army 55 years ago. He said changing the no-tuition offer "is like buying an insurance policy for education and when its maturity comes, you say, 'Oops, we changed the rules.'"

Mildred Reeves, 62 and from Elgin, said older students "teach the young students how to be students" and help give them experience interacting with people of a different generation, which they did not do much when they were in high school.

In a rare move, Sam responded to the public comments by stepping away from the board dais and explaining his administration's position.

The new policy, he said, is simply to follow the letter of the Illinois Senior Citizen Courses Act. It requires community colleges to waive tuition only for people who are 65 or older and whose household income is less than 200 percent of the poverty level ($23,760 for a person living alone, $32,040 for a household of two, $40,320 for a household of three). Also, the class involved must have a minimum number of regular tuition-paying students and must have enough open seats to accommodate free seniors.

Sam said that in more prosperous times, starting in 1985, the college went beyond the state requirement by lowering the free-tuition age to 60 and not even requiring the recipients to meet any income limits.

If any seniors with higher incomes feel unable to pay tuition, Sam said, he invited them to talk to ECC's "very robust" financial aid office about getting some kind of scholarship, grant or loan, the same way a younger student can.

Sam said ending the senior tuition waiver is just one of about 20 steps the college will take in the coming fiscal year to deal with financial woes caused by the state not having a budget. He said the waiver also was temporarily limited in the past during tough financial times, but none have been as grim as this one.

This budget year, Sam said, "We were expecting $6 million from the state that we have not gotten and we are not going to get." On top of that, he said, students have not received expected $900,000 in state grants.