Students can take 90 of 120 credits at community college

Pima Community College and Northern Arizona University took a step Wednesday to making a bachelor’s degree more accessible and affordable to Arizona’s population.

In a joint news conference at PCC’s Downtown Campus, Pima Chancellor Roy Flores and NAU President John Haeger announced the creation of the state’s first “90/30″ degree plan.

The program, which is also referred to as “three plus one,” will allow students to take their first 90 credits (or three years) at PCC and their final 30 credits either at NAU’s Flagstaff campus or in Tucson through NAU’s distance-learning program.

“This helps address both accessibility and affordability,” said Flores before the news conference. “The Arizona Board of Regents has concluded there’s a huge shortage of opportunities for bachelor’s degrees in Arizona. We are the fastest- growing state in the nation and we have fewer universities and fewer opportunities for degrees than many states. This is a step to resolve that.”

A report from ABOR said Arizona would have to produce “69,000 new degrees today just to be average with the other states,” Flores said.

Four degrees will be available to students wanting to take advantage of the 90/30 program, Flores said: bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees in interdisciplinary studies with an emphasis in humanities or the same degrees with an emphasis in public management.

Upon completion, the students would have a degree from NAU, even if they never set foot in Flagstaff.

PCC already has a 90/30 agreement with Indiana University for a general studies bachelor’s degree, and Flores said announcing that program in 2006 “caught the attention of people in Arizona who thought we might do it here.”

While the agreement is formalized with Pima, Flores said “it’s not exclusive.”

“Any other community college in the state could take advantage of this outreach with NAU,” he said, adding that PCC would like to partner with UA.

Fred Hurst, NAU vice president for extended programs and dean of distance learning, said the program, which begins in the fall, is designed to provide “maximum flexibility” to a wider variety of students in the state, including the large number of adult students at PCC who work full time while attending school.

“NAU has reached out to various communities across the state for some time,” Hurst said. “As a public institution, we’re not primarily about the tuition. We’re about serving the state in a way that makes the most sense for the most citizens.”

Full-time tuition (12 credit hours) for resident students at PCC is $1,128 per year and $3,672 per year for out-of-state students.

By contrast, a year’s tuition at NAU for in-state students is $5,031 and $14,323 for out-of-state students. The savings realized by an in-state student enrolled in the new 90/30 program would be a minimum of $3,903 on tuition alone, not accounting for tuition increases in the future.

The cost to attend UA is currently $5,037 for in-state students.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Education, Local. Tags for this post: Education-K-12, Education-K-12-Local, K-12, page-a04, Renee Schafer Horton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.