The SCCC/PCCC nursing students recently received a letter informing us of an additional clinical fee of $1000 being imposed on us, which is a FORTY PERCENT increase in the tuition. While we understand that education funding is being cut on many different levels statewide, we feel that a FORTY PERCENT increase on the nursing students alone is outrageous.

In addition, the letter did not even state exactly what the "clinical fee" covers. To the best of our understanding the hospitals and doctor's offices that participate in the clinical experiences do not charge the school. Since the individual students are responsible for their own malpractice insurance, that rules out insurance costs. Compensation to the instructors for all their time spent on securing clinical hours would be understandable, but to our knowledge there is no scheduled salary raise for them. Therefore, we are unsure where this money would be applied.

Already the SCCC/PCCC nursing students are asked to pay for a service they barely use. We are required to pay a $1500 lab fee each semester. This made sense in the first semester when we were testing off on dozens of skills. However, we barely used the lab in the second semester and only used the lab once in the third semester for a "simulation" exercise. This tuition hike is completely unrealistic, and will not be tolerated. We will not be quiet while being taken advantage of on such an extreme level.