Schools

JJC Board Greenlights Student Fee Hike for New Buildings

Students will be paying $4 more per credit hour to help pay for a new multipurpose building in Joliet and new student/academic building space in Romeoville.

Full-time Joliet Junior College students will be paying about $50 more per semester to help fund $45 million in future additions to the Joliet and Romeoville campuses.

The JJC Board signed off on the student fee increase of $4 per semester hour with a 4-2 vote, and is expected to approve a $70 million bond sale for the proposed construction at its Aug. 13 meeting, according to a story in the Joliet Herald News.

The increase pushes the capital assessment fee all students pay from $17 to $21. Someone taking a full-time load of four classes can expect to pay an additional $48 per semester.

The capital assessment fee is part of the overall per-credit-hour cost, which also includes tuition and student and technology fees. So, while tuition per se will not be increasing, the per-hour cost that students see on the bottom line of their bill will go from $107 to $111 with the change, she said.

The $45 million the school has earmarked for construction will fund a new 
142,000-square-feet multipurpose building for the Joliet campus and more than 26,000 square feet of new academic and student development space on the Romeoville campus.

Construction, however, is still a few years off as school officials and architects begin work on the specific plans for the buildings, school officials said. 

The remaining $25 million from the bond sale will be used to restructure debt, the Herald News story said.

Trustees Barbara Adams and Tina Markley voted against the increase. Adams said it was bad timing to initiate the fee in the upcoming spring semester, the Herald News story said.

“I’m opposed to that,” said Adams, who prefers that tuition and fees be stable throughout the school year. “You have parents and you have students who have planned for the school year. ... I think it’s wrong to do it in the middle of the year.”


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