By Bianca Bower
For the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, the Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustees approved a 2.4% tuition increase. This means that for in-district students, there will be a $3 increase per contact hour, raising rates from $124 to $127.
Many students were unhappy to hear about the increase, such as Joey Daniel, an 18-year-old, first-year student at GRCC studying automotive. Daniel said this tuition increase will negatively affect him in multiple ways.
“I don’t like it, not at all,” he said. “Even just this semester that I’m currently taking, I’ve had to drop two classes just to afford it, even with financial aid.”
While Daniel did receive money from the Federal Application For Student Aid (FAFSA), he is paying for his tuition mostly out of pocket. The financial burden placed on Daniel will impact how long it takes him to get his degree.
“It will probably put me down to only being able (to take) one or two classes a semester, making my two year degree probably take four,” he said.
Daniel claims, “It’s just overwhelming. I (will) have less money for gas and food.”
Other students may not be as greatly affected by this change in tuition. Rachel Schelk, a third-year student at GRCC studying nursing from Kentwood, said that by the next school year she will be completed with school, so the increase won’t affect her.
When asked about the Michigan Reconnect program, she affirmed that she was a part of it and agreed it helped her financial situation this academic year and would the next year if she were to still be in school. She suggests that this will affect her younger sibling, though, “She’s still taking classes, more hours.”
A group of Grand Rapids natives studying radiology at GRCC believe that the increase is unfair across the board.
Cindy Paramo, a 21-year-old said, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair because tuition is already expensive as is.”
Twenty-three-year-old Lance Baje added, “Everything else is getting more expensive as well.”
Cassidy West, 23, elaborated, “It’s already hard for people to afford college to begin with and afford to go.
”The concerns with fairness and affordability expressed by Paramo, Baje and West raise awareness to concerns that many on campus have. With these concerns, Vice President of Finance and Administration Lisa Freiburger, who is currently acting president of GRCC due to Charles Lepper being placed on administrative leave, stated that GRCC’s overall cost of tuition remains, “below the state average,” at the recent March board of trustees meeting.
