Each year MCCC increases tuition incrementally, but the circumstances surrounding this year’s increase were unusual and contentious.
The Board of Trustees originally proposed a 3% tuition increase in February, and there was an open forum for students to weigh in, but a 5% increase was proposed unexpectedly in mid-March, just two days before the budget was to be voted. A required Town Hall meeting for open discussion was hastily scheduled for March 15, when students were on spring break and no students were notified that it was happening.
The 5% proposal and the lack of notification sparked a strong reaction from students and staff alike.
Christian Perez, President of the Student Government Association said during the Town Hall, “We received no email blasts or text messages regarding the meeting. Yet I still received [college] notice of gas line maintenance and messages from Transfer Services…Both of which I hope we could mostly agree are a little less important than a proposed 5% tuition increase.”
Perez said he had only learned of the meeting through a professor and then he “spread the word in every way that I could.”
During the Town Hall meeting, Professor of Communication and President of the Faculty Association Alvyn Haywood called the act of scheduling the meeting over break and with such short notice “sneaky,” a term that was reiterated by several other participants.
Beth Knight, Executive Assistant in the office of Enrollment Management and Student Experience, said, “It’s not just about communication. What about transparency? Trying to push this agenda item during spring break…is not a good look. Once we lose students, we may not see them back.”
Despite the lack of communication, the meeting had a higher than usual turnout for a Town Hall.
College President Dr. Jianping Wang said in a later interview, “There were a lot of people speaking at the hearing, and I saw that was the largest turnout in my recollection, in my seven years. A lot of people told me they never have seen so many people at the hearing.”
In an interview with The VOICE, MCCC Board of Trustees Chair Mark Matzen said of the scheduling decision, “The one thing I will apologize for is not understanding it was spring break. I think I would have done things differently had I known.”
During the Town Hall Laura Schepps, Vice President of Finance and Administration, presented several slides that included data she indicated put the 5% increase in line with the typical in-county increase of around 3-4% following the notably low 2% increase during the 2020 COVID crisis.
Schepps said, “The potential for going higher on the tuition side, is because of two things: the inflation and our actual, you know, tuition fee number.”
Several students pushed back against the notion that inflation would have come as a surprise and said a 5% increase would potentially prevent them from coming to MCCC.
Student Andy Douglas said, “If I lose the opportunity I’ve been given because of a tuition hike, I’ll be at a total loss for what to do. This is my chance. [I’m] not trying to appeal to emotion, but MCCC is my chance.”
Several students questioned whether the Board was proposing the 5% increase due to Governor Murphy’s March 10 budget speech in which he said he supported expanding the Community College Opportunity Grant (CCOG) funding that makes it possible for certain low-income students to attend community college for free after all other aid is exhausted.
In response to the CCOG question, Schepps said, “One of the things I mentioned earlier, is that [CCOG] is going to mitigate some of this. So if they increase the eligibility, the income threshold for the Community College Opportunity Grant, that allows people who may need the most help to get that help through that program…I would suggest to any student, that everybody should fill out a FAFSA form, and get as much aid as they could potentially get and work with our financial aid area to mitigate a lot of this stuff.”
Perez said, “It’s a dangerous proposal, especially when we can’t be sure that CCOG which is something many students, including myself, rely on, won’t be more seriously affected by a more dramatic increase of 5%.”
Two days after the Town Hall, the Board of Trustees held their monthly meeting via Zoom. The vote to approve the 5% increase was on the agenda. Students, faculty, and staff members showed up to share their objections to the tuition increase and to the way it was proposed.
Matzen began the session by notifying participants that the vote on the tuition increase had been pulled from the agenda, but many students and staff members used the open public comment period to register their complaints.
Trisha Muka, Associate Director of Financial Aid, said, “I’m extremely concerned that Mercer seems to think of CCOG as a cure or a Band-Aid for raising tuition or for any other concerns related to paying for college. Since its inception, less than 10% of our students have received CCOG each year.”
Board member and Mayor of Robbinsville David Fried said in an interview with The VOICE, “From my perspective, we’re in a place right now where I thought even a 3% percent increase was high.”
He added, “Given the fact we had a decrease in enrollment, we got an opportunity, I believe, to potentially even stay flat [in terms of tuition] this year, and I thought that was the right thing to do because I thought it was a good way to give back to the students and also the faculty that stuck with us for the last two years, while we’ve been virtual.”
In his interview with The VOICE Matzen reflected on the proceedings saying, “We heard the feedback from the Town Hall. We decided to go back and take a look and see what we can do. And so we pulled the budget from the agenda. So to me, as I was sitting there, and from the Board, I was just thinking like ‘so the system worked.’ We heard everyone’s concerns. I think what I learned out of this is to start the process earlier.”
The community was notified of the decision to revert back to the originally proposed 3% increase in a broadcast email sent out by Schepps on March 29.
The email said, in part, “On Wednesday, March 23, 2022, at a special meeting of the Finance and Facilities committee of the Board of Trustees, the Board Chair and the committee Chair authorized the College administration to publish the Academic Year 22/23 tuition increase at 3% effective March 24, 2022. The Board of Trustees will retroactively approve the increase at the April BOT meeting.”
Dr. Wang said “I am so very proud of who spoke up at the last board meeting, faculty students, and staff, in support of 3% rather than 5% and I think it played a very big role to make the rest of the board members think, and they voiced their opinions afterward as well. So I think that played a critical role in reversing the decision.”
Perez says he wants students to know that “They made a difference” the people that were there, the people that relayed the message to their friends, the people that voiced concern or outrage over [the increase], whatever they did, even just being there, even if you didn’t talk, it helped.”
