AP)– Texas school officials decided Monday to add a month to Fall and Spring semesters in all colleges and universities in the state because of the rising COVID-19 and Monkeypox outbreak cases.
They also voted to raise $2,000 tuition beginning Spring.
The new measure will affect 20,000 students currently enrolled at UTEP and EPCC, who will have one week in December for the winter break and half of July and two weeks of August for a summer break.
The extra month and tuition raise is an effort to recover lost school days and staffing shortages, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath said.
“College students have lost time. And, because of that, they are failing in their classes and not graduating compared to two years ago,” he said.
Morath said current tuition will be raised to $3,632 for a 12-credit hours per semester, from the current $1,632, plus labs and fees.
EPCC President William Serrata, who voted in favor of the measure, does not see a drop of enrollment or summer classes being affected.
“Let’s be clear. Students have the money, but they like to spend it in nonsense. If they want an education, then they should pay for it,” Serrata said.
The extra $2,000-tuition will help buy disinfectants, cleaning products and COVID-19 and Monkeypox vaccines for faculty and staff.
According to health officials, in El Paso there have been about 100 cases of Monkeypox, most of them coming from 18- to 25-year-olds attending college.
EPCC and UTEP as well as other colleges reopened their face-to-face classes last fall, but are struggling to keep students from getting infected in the midst of a coronavirus surge caused by the omicron variant.
The semester has barely started, and so far, there have been 192,145 new student COVID-19 cases and 61,142 staff cases, according to the Texas Education Agency.
That appears to be the highest case level since the pandemic began in 2020, although the data collected by the state is often incomplete.