Community colleges across New York State are in trouble.
A new report by the New York Public Interest Research Group finds that the cost of tuition at these institutions has gone up dramatically, and could be prohibitive.
“In some cases, tuition exceeds the maximum award that you can get under financial aid with the state’s tuition assistance program,” Blair Horner, NYPIRG’s executive director told Spectrum News on Capitol Tonight. “We’ve also determined that the state provides about half of the tuition that the students have been paying. And when we looked a little deeper, it’s clear that the state has been hemorrhaging the number of students who go to community colleges.”
Their estimates also show that some community colleges across New York have seen their total enrollment split in half over the last decade- another major concern for administrators and state officials.
He called it a ‘financial death spiral’.
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