AACC’s Board of Trustees approved a budget on Feb. 27 that will raise tuition and fees by $2 per credit hour next fall.

The budget will raise tuition by $1 and the athletics fee by $1, which would each raise about $210,000 for the college in fiscal year 2025, according to Vice President for Learning Resources Management Melissa Beardmore. This total operating budget for fiscal year 2025 is $139,835,900, an increase of about $7 million from 2024.

“One of our budget guiding principles that our board has adopted is small, incremental increases each year versus going several years without an increase and then having to do a larger increase,” Beardmore said.

The college gets funding from three main sources: the state, the county and tuition. According to Beardmore, if one of those sources goes down, the others have to increase to make up for it.

According to Beardmore, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s budget for fiscal year 2025 would cut funding to AACC by almost $2 million.

“This year, we actually have a state funding cut that does require us to raise tuition,” Beardmore said.

The college will also request an increase of about $5.7 million from the county, an 11% increase from last year.

Last year, the college raised tuition by $2 per credit and the athletics fee and student activity fee by $1 per credit hour each. Beardmore said this year, it didn’t raise tuition by as much to keep it affordable for students.

“Given inflation and given some other things, we try to balance affordability,” Beardmore said. “That’s … one of our mandates for our budget.”

As well as accounting for inflation, the tuition and fee increase will help fund “additional investments in tutoring, some equipment for the Health and Life Sciences Building, investments in athletics and investments in our language translation services,” Beardmore said.

According to Beardmore, the increased athletics fees this year and last year are part of “a multi-year plan to appropriately fund athletics,” and will also help account for the “additional investments” required when the Riverhawks transitioned from Division III to Division II last year.