COD to hike some tuitions

Incoming College of DuPage dental hygiene and nursing students will pay double for those classes.

The board approved the tuition hikes for those programs at Thursday's meeting. Second-year students currently enrolled in the program won't have to pay the increased tuition when the prices go up in the fall.

The courses now cost $92.15 a credit hour.

College officials said they had been contemplating doubling the tuition for the costly programs for the past two years, but new COD President Robert Breuder said the time had come.

The college can only offer nursing classes to 117 students each year and only 25 students are accepted into the dental hygiene program each year. But more than twice the number of students apply for the programs than are accepted each year. Breuder said the demand for the classes was one reason why they were chosen for the tuition hike.

College officials said they are the two most expensive programs to operate because accreditation requirements mandate a low student/teacher ratio, which drives up the instructor costs. Combined, the two programs cost more than $2 million to run each year, according to financial reports the college released ahead of the meeting.

Currently, the programs operate with an annual deficit of more than $880,000. If tuition rates are doubled and state reimbursements are maintained, the programs would only lose the college $340,000 a year, college finance officials estimated. In the past, the losses were covered by excess revenues generated by less costly courses, those officials said. But extra funds are drying up because of the poor economy and the state isn't reimbursing community colleges as much as they have in the past, Breuder complained.

Board Chairman Mike McKinnon said the students who graduate from these programs enter careers making lucrative salaries.

"These are great programs, but they're also very costly programs," he said. "The money they make I know they'll be able to make that up very quickly."

Trustee Kathy Wessel was the lone dissenting vote on the initiative.

"I think we're putting a horrible burden on them," she said.

Students will only pay double for the nursing and dental hygiene classes, which makes up about 60 percent of their course load, Breuder said. The college is investigating tuition hikes for other money losing programs at the college like the culinary program and the graphics program, he added.