MARK WAITE / PVT John Rice, Great Basin College director of institutional advancement, talks to the Great Basin College Pahrump campus advisory board in Pahrump last week. The board includes a number of local leaders visible in the foreground, like Desert View Hospital Chief Executive Officer Susan Davila and Pahrump Valley Disposal co-owner John Shea in the back row, and Allan Parker from Rural Nevada Development Corporation and Karen Spalding of Spalding Construction in the front. Advertisement

Students attending Great Basin College in Pahrump will have to dole out 5 percent more for tuition next fall, the Nevada Board of Regents already decided earlier, during the school year.

Last week the regents decided to tack on another 5 percent increase in the spring.

The tuition in the fall semester at Great Basin College will be $57.25 per credit for associate degree classes. In the spring it will rise to $60, according to John Rice, director of institutional advancement for Great Basin College.

Rice said that's still a bargain compared to the four-year university system.

Undergraduate tuition for Nevada residents will increase to $136 per credit this fall at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. That's up from $129 per credit this past school year, but that increase at UNLV will remain in effect for the fall and spring semesters.

The average three-credit associate degree class at Great Basin College will cost $171.75 in the fall and $180 in the spring semester. That won't include fees that apply to some classes. Tuition costs are higher for four-year bachelor's degree or baccalaureate programs.

While the legislature cut funding for the system of higher education 13.1 percent, Great Basin College only had an 8.5 percent cut, Rice said.

"It costs about $1,800 in tuition and fees for a full-time Nevada student here at Great Basin College, significantly less than what it costs at the university," Rice told members of the Great Basin College Pahrump campus advisory board meeting last week. "An associate degree is about $12,000, and that includes what you need to live on as well. So it's a pretty affordable degree."

It costs about $4,400 per year to attend the University of Nevada Las Vegas full-time, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week.

Tuition rates are expected to raise $17 million for the system of higher education in the coming school year and $37 million in the 2010-11 school year.

About 3,500 full-time students attend Great Basin College at the main campus in Elko, in Pahrump and other locations like Ely, Battle Mountain and Winnemucca, Rice said. The full-time equivalent -- the students taking 12 credits or more that is used in calculating state funding -- is about 1,500 students, he said.

There are about 70 full-time faculty members and 160 adjunct faculty, Rice said. The college covers 62,000 square miles from Owyhee on the Idaho border down to Pahrump, including many students who take courses online.

Despite the rising costs, Rice emphasized the value of higher education in Pahrump.

Eight students graduated from the baccalaureate program at the Pahrump campus this year, Rice said. A few of those graduated in the education program, which he said is important to keep teachers in rural communities.

"When we first started our baccalaureate program in the 1990s, one of the biggest challenges we had, that rural Nevada communities had, they were hiring teachers fresh out of college from Minnesota or North Dakota. They come and they teach for a couple years and as soon as there was a job available in their home town, they went back," Rice said.

"We graduated over 120 teachers in the K to 12 area now since we started out the program, and that's a great cohort, locally-grown teachers who want to be in rural Nevada and will stay in rural Nevada because this is where they want to be," he said.

Rice mentioned eight students who graduated from the education program at Battle Mountain and all got jobs in the Lander County School District.

Rice was excited about the prospect of acquiring 280 acres on the south end of Pahrump for a new college campus. Right now Ely has the most land among the Great Basin College sites with 160 acres, he said, while the Elko campus is getting crowded.

"We're really looking forward to the physical growth you'll experience down here shortly," Rice told the committee.

Two of the three full-time faculty members at the Pahrump Great Basin College campus were at the meeting. They reported teaching almost 200 students each, both in the classroom and online.

Rice defended the Internet and interactive video instruction system.

"There's not a student who will tell you that they thought their college experience was diminished at all by that either," Rice said.

He concluded his remarks adding, "Once people start getting college degrees, all kinds of things start happening in their communities. Quality of life improves, there's less dependence on government subsidies for families. All the good numbers start coming up and the bad numbers start going down when you have a more educated community."