AWC slashes tuition rate to spur enrollment
Students 17 and younger will pay just $25 per credit hour
Young students in Yuma and La Paz counties who want to take classes at AWC just got a tuition break.
Beginning this summer, students 17 and younger will pay just $25 per credit hour, said Vice President for Student Services Bryan Doak at a ceremony announcing the new rate at Cibola High School.
“This is a cost-savings of $171 per three-credit course,” Doak said. In the past, high school students received a $15 discount. Tuition at AWC is $82 per credit hour.
The change was implemented under the college’s ninth president, Daniel Corr, who believes the initiative is essential to creating a college going culture in the region.
“Arizona Western College is a college of the community. It belongs to the communities in which it serves, and we know for La Paz and Yuma counties to have vibrant economies, we need an educated populous, that’s absolutely the key to both individual and community development,” he said.
Corr said research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation shows that high school students who successfully complete two or more college credit courses while in high school inevitably attend college and it is almost certain they will earn a credential.
“This is our part as a community college and a college of the community to spur greater numbers of degree attainers and we’re just excited to welcome all these folks onto Arizona Western College’s campus in the very near future,” Corr said Thursday morning at the high school.
Juniors Dakota Meeks and Toni Green both spoke about how the change will help them.
“Right now I have paid $500 tuition alone … for this year all together,” Meeks said, who is currently taking French 102. “With this cut I .. will only pay $200. That is amazing for me, because for me having my first part-time job this year, and coming from a lowincome family, that just gives more opportunity for deciding what I want to do. I want to learn.”
Green, who plans to have a career in graphic design, said “the reduction of the money here at the college and what they’re offering here makes it easier for me to achieve my goals and to achieve what I desire to do as a student.”
The Yuma and La Paz County Community College District Governing Board actually made the decision to lower the rate at its November 2016 board meeting on a 4-0 vote (one board member was absent, according to meeting minutes).
The rate applies to all students under age 17, Doak said, regardless of whether they are enrolled in a public, private or charter school.
The rate also applies to students enrolled in courses through the Southwest Technical Education District of Yuma.
“What this has done and what this will do is demonstrate the investment and the belief in everyone of our students. We know how strong our students are,” said Yuma High School District Superintendent Toni Badone.
“We have never had more intelligent, more experienced, more well-read students than we do today, and technology, of course, reinforces that. We also know that our students are creating their own pathways. The jobs of the future aren’t even in existence today,” Badone continued, “so they’re creating those pathways and if they can take college classes while they’re in high school it only extends their ability to really make that happen and create their own pathways to success.”
The tuition rate will go into effect with the start of the summer session. Students must still meet prerequisite requirements, Doak said. Registration for the summer session starts March 20 and classes begin May 30.
“We’re hoping that this new tuition rate encourages even more students to stick their toe in the water and take advantage of this opportunity, at a huge discount, and the courses still transfer to the universities,” Doak said.