WC NEWS

The Weatherford College Board of Trustees approved a decrease in the overall cost for dual credit students during a special board meeting held Monday, May 1.   

The decrease comes with eliminating the $25 per hour student enrichment fee for dual credit students.   

“Dual credit is becoming increasingly competitive, and quality is not the only concern that some competitors are competing with,” said WC President Tod Allen Farmer. “Some of them are not competing with high-quality programs; their focus is cost. And they’re bringing low-cost alternatives to the table.”   

Most dual credit students pay WC’s in-district tuition rate of $117 per credit hour. These students will still pay the new $10 per credit hour technology fee, but eliminating the student enrichment fee reduces the cost of a three-hour course from $456 to $381 for the upcoming academic year.   

Currently, the only high school students with access to tuition lower than the in-district rate are in Springtown ISD. In 2017, SISD started a pilot program with reduced tuition because they have a large pool of teachers with master’s degrees who can teach dual credit classes.   

“We worked out a program where their students would pay lower tuition, and the college would send less money to the district for that instruction because their districts are paying them,” said Dr. Sarah Lock, associate dean of dual credit and e-Learning. “We still supplement that instruction but at a lower rate than the typical adjunct rate that is paid. So, the other part of this affordability initiative would be to open this pilot arrangement to other districts with sufficient embedded faculty.”   

Districts that meet these requirements could provide dual credit courses to their students for $65 per semester credit hour plus the $10 per hour technology fee, making a three-hour course $225.   

Lock said Granbury ISD is a prime example of a district that could implement this cost-saving initiative for its students.   

Approximately 30 percent of WC’s student body are dual credit students from 40 area high schools completing courses for both high school and college credit simultaneously.   

This WC student population has a high success rate, with 95 percent earning college credit in their courses. By the time these students graduate high school, they average more than 15 hours of college credit—equivalent to one semester.   

“As dual credit has grown across the state, it has seen rapid growth in other areas as well,” Lock said. “It’s not just Weatherford College that has had an increase in dual credit interest... As community colleges have found more success in dual credit and as students and parents have taken advantage of those opportunities, four-year colleges and universities have become interested in this area as well.”   

In some cases, these universities offer dual credit courses at lower rates than WC, which prompted college administrators to create an affordability initiative to retain these students.   

“We also want to ensure that we maintain sustainable partnerships,” Lock said. “So, as we’ve looked at this initiative, we’ve looked at sustainability for Weatherford College. And we take a point of pride in retaining our service area partners while ensuring that our instruction is excellent and that our service is responsive so that we’re still doing an excellent job of providing education to our dual credit partners. And we are interested in retaining this highly successful student population.”   

The board also met in executive session. Following the closed-door portion of the meeting, the board authorized the sale of 295 acres of surplus property along State Hwy 171.