A $10-per-credit fee is on tap for about 7,000 high school students throughout Southern Arizona who take dual enrollment courses through Pima Community College.
The courses, offered at 43 Southern Arizona high schools, allow students to take college-level courses for high school and college credit. At Pima, those courses have typically been free and a pathway for some students who may not have considered college.
The fee will be implemented in the 2027-28 school year after the Pima Community College Governing Board passed its budget at last week’s meeting. Pima says it is exploring a scholarship or waiver for families who may need it.
“We have a year between now and then to continue to work with the districts about figuring out how do we put this in process,” Pima Governing Board President Greg Taylor told Arizona Luminaria. “We need to figure out are there things that can be uniform? Are there things that are going to have to be customized? One of those elements is some mechanism for scholarship or waiver or something based on financial need, but we don’t have an exact process or policy defined yet.”
English, math and career and technical education courses are the most common types of dual enrollment courses taken in Arizona, according to Education Forward Arizona, a nonprofit advocating for high-quality education and training in partnership with the business sector. It includes a focus on the Achieve60AZ college attainment goal, which aims to get 60% of working Arizonans a college degree or trade certification by 2030.
A combination of expanded enrollment, rising operating costs, and no money from the state are reasons for the new fee, Pima says.
“I believe these courses are important to give students more real-life and experiential learning experiences,” said Madison Bonomolo, 22, a former Catalina Foothills High student who took a medical terminology course at Pima JTED while in high school.
Bonomolo used that head start to earn her biochemistry degree from Northeastern University in Boston and aims to start medical school soon.
“Many students from different districts rely on these courses to secure a certification upon graduating high school so they can immediately enter the workforce,” she said via text message. “In my opinion, instituting fees for these courses could provide a barrier for many students and make it less accessible to all high school students.”
That equitable access to college is vital. One third of all high school students nationally take a dual enrollment course. In Arizona, it’s one in four students, Education Forward data from 2023 said.
“We are so invested in this because of what it’s done for students,” Sunnyside Unified School District Superintendent Jose Gastelum told Arizona Luminaria, adding more than 1,000 students in his district are dually enrolled.
Last month, five Desert View High School graduates earned their associate’s degree the day before they were awarded their high school diplomas, he said.
“This program really fights off this imposter syndrome for our kids and puts our students on a path. They’re earning college credit before they even start college and they start building that academic confidence that they need to move forward,” Gastelum said. “And they start believing that they can do college work. We know they can, but they have to believe it for themselves.”
Superintendents from across Southern Arizona met with Pima throughout last school year. They discussed the fee and negotiated with Pima, Gastelum said, adding a student cap and limit per family, because more than one student may be dually enrolled at one time.
Dual enrollment courses cost Pima $1.7 million a year and high school teachers require special certification to teach the specified courses, which either they or their districts pay for. The new fee could bring in $372,000.
At Maricopa Community Colleges, the largest community college system in the nation, dual enrollment fees are $50 to $97 a credit hour plus enrollment fees, depending on the school district. MCC offers need-based waivers.
Charging the new fee is complicated, Taylor said. While Pima, with about 18,000 students some reimbursement, he sees big value in creating that pathway for all students. Yet, the current Pima students unfairly pay much more per credit, he said.
Pima’s current tuition is just over $100 a credit for in-state students and the University of Arizona is about $500 a credit.
“Dual enrollment is critically important,” he said. “It gives especially lower-income families a step up toward their college education and allows them to save on higher tuition.
“In high school dual enrollment, you didn’t pay anything up until now. And that doesn’t strike me as fair. So it essentially means that our students in their tuition are subsidizing other students taking these courses,” he said. “There’s got to be some balance that we find between maintaining access and realizing how important that is, but also balancing against the institution’s financial needs.
So we’re trying to find a balance. I think I was clear in the meeting that if it were up to me solely, and it is not, but if it was up to me solely, I would have put it higher because I think this doesn’t go as far as I would have liked to have seen to recoup our costs.”
More budget breakdown
Pima’s $347 million budget was the meeting focus last week. The college continues to face funding cuts from the federal government and underfunding from the state. Last spring, it raised tuition, approved a 2% property tax hike for Pima County residents and OK’d a bond question for the November ballot.
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.)
Baked into the budget plan are proceeds from that $250 million bond proposal. If the bond passes, Pima’s capital budget jumps 52%. Taylor told Arizona Luminaria that’s how the budget must proceed at this point.
“It has to be built in, otherwise we can’t spend the money,” he said, adding if some bond money was not listed, Pima cannot access those dollars until the next budget go-round.
The continued loss of TRIO grants was discussed as Pima continues to appeal the defunct program, which served about 1,500 students who needed it to get postsecondary education.
The basis for defunding the program? Social and emotional learning within the Pima curriculum, Taylor said.
“They were denied because the stated reason was that we included curriculum around social-emotional learning, which on a side note is a requirement from the Arizona Department of Education,” Taylor said. “It boggles my mind that is the federal government’s position that we wouldn’t fund this program because we don’t want you teaching people how to address students’ trauma.
“These are students who have disabilities and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. These are the folks that we want higher education to create opportunities for,” he said. “So why would they continue to stifle these programs that help them access those higher education resources? I just don’t fathom the reason why that’s a good idea.”
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