When it comes to education that is funded by the tax payers what comes to your mind? The odds are that you think about the kind of public education that everyone gets. You picture kids heading off to grade school, or the surly teens waiting outside of the local high school. The odds are good that you did not give much though to your local community college. Those two-year schools churn out college graduates who work in a lot of positions that our society depends on every day. Sadly as a school that is funded, at least in part, by money coming from the government when things get lean these schools often have to make cuts in order to get by and stretch ever last dollar out of their budget.

This time the job cuts are coming to the Harrisburg Area Community College as the school is getting ready to cut back on staff in order to make ends meet. The school is facing a bit of a double whammy when it comes to the cuts to their budget. The school is facing both a shrinking amount of funding, before all is said and done for the budget the school will have to face a decrease in the amount of money they are given by the state and federal government as well as an overall decrease in the amount of money they are getting from their students. The school is not charging students less in order to help them make their own budgets more workable they are simply having less students who are choosing to enroll at the school.

Earlier in the week the school passed a $180.2 million budget that comes along with a restructuring. The restructure will include the cut back of at least 19 workers in the process. For now all that we know if that the cuts are slated to impact both members of the professional and the administrative staff. Sadly, the rest of the students will be impacted by the restructuring of the school as well. The budget does not allow for raises of any kind so the staff will have to do without raises of any kind, at least until the month of January. In January the school will give the staff a 2.5 percent pay increase over all, which is some compensation for waiting for the freeze to be over.

In addition in order to make up for the lack of students the system will be increasing tuition for the students who remain at the school. For now the increase is not that larger and some students may not even notice it. For the average student the cuts will be between $3 and $9 a credit hour. Students in the county will only see an increase of $3 a credit, the students who are from out of state will see an increase in $9 for each credit hour. Students who live inside of the state, but not inside of the county will see an increase of about $6 per each credit hour to their bill.