The Pima Community College Governing Board voted unanimously Wednesday night to raise tuition and let voters decide this fall on modernizing facilities, building new workforce training centers and refinancing existing debt.
A $250 million bond — Pima’s first bond in more than 30 years — would be funded by property taxes and go before voters on the November ballot. Bonds are loans that pay for capital expenses like building renovations, new construction, security systems, etc. — and are paid back over time with interest.
Pima, which has just over 18,000 students this semester, last hiked tuition in 2024. The board says it has no choice but to ask students and Pima County voters for more money.
“We don’t have a lot of options left,” Pima Board Chairman Greg Taylor told Arizona Luminaria. “Is Pima County willing to invest in ourselves?”
The college has no dedicated state operating funding, faces uncertain federal revenue and has stretched its reserves to cover capital needs for years. Tuition and property taxes were held flat last year and Pima cut $4 million in recurring operating expenses through consolidation and attrition. Pima says that cannot continue.
“We are tightening our operations while protecting student-facing services. We’re aligning our resources with priorities and making difficult term decisions so that when we speak about investment, we do so with credibility,” Chancellor Jeffrey Nasse said at Wednesday’s meeting. “Our students, of course, are from Pima County. Our graduates stay in Pima County. They become our nurses. They become our paramedics.
They become our cyber security analysts, advance manufacturing technicians, entrepreneurs, builders, educators, and small business leaders.”
If voters approve the bond, the cost to a homeowner with a $250,000 property would be an additional $31 a year over 20 years or $46 a year over 10 years, Pima says.
In the 2026-27 school year, tuition will rise $2.50 per credit hour for a total of $103 for in-state students in lower-division courses. Upper-division courses will cost $154.50 for an in-state student. (For example, an in-state student taking English 101 would pay $2.50 more per hour, but $54 more per hour for English 301.)
Tuition is also tiered by discipline. That means areas of study that potentially generate higher-paying jobs after graduation — think welding, nursing, and aviation — would cost more money to take.
For comparison, the average public in-state cost per credit hour in Arizona at a four-year university is $477 a credit, while an Arizona community college credit averages $91, according to educationdata.org.
That savings, smaller class sizes and staying close to home meant everything to former Pima student Manuel Zepeda. The Pueblo High School graduate attended PCC for 2.5 years and now studies journalism and sports management at the University of Arizona.
“Going to Pima was 100% valuable to me,” Zepeda said. “I’m a first-generation college student. I paid everything out of pocket. I qualified for work study. So, seeing the price difference between U of A and Pima, it kind of helps out a lot.
“The professors, hands down and very compact classes and everything — it was familiar at Pima,” Zepeda said, adding the community college helped his transition after high school. “I felt calm and I was able to produce my best still at the same time.”
Zepeda says he needs more information on both the bond question and tuition hike. His little brother is now a Pima student and “it’s going to affect my household especially,” he said.
Pima will respond to those taxpayer questions over the coming months, Taylor said, as it makes the case to voters.
“We have not had state funding since 2009 and weathered that storm the best that we can. We’ve also been hit with federal budget cuts,” he said. “We want to continue to provide the highest quality education that has responded to the needs in our community.”
Included in the $250 million bond package:
- A new Center of Excellence in Public Safety at the east campus
- A new campus police headquarters on the Drachman Street side of the downtown campus, where the college demolished several historic motels
- Student support center expansions
- Centers of excellence in cyber/IT, arts, and STEM
- Center of Excellence in Education, tied to the new bachelor’s degree program
- $56 million in deferred maintenance
- Refinancing some existing revenue bonds to save $2.8 million in future interest and free up $4 million annually in the operating budget
Arizona Luminaria’s Becky Pallack contributed to this story.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
