Tech helps with commute

By Staff Reports

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Two-year colleges nationwide are rearranging their schedules to help cash-strapped students save money on travel costs, and York Tech is among those schools offering students a helping hand.

Students at two-year institutions are more likely to commute to school than to live on campus, as many students at four-year colleges do. And with the high cost of gasoline, commuting can cut deeply into a student's budget.

Sympathetic school officials, including those at York Technical College in Rock Hill, have rewritten class schedules to ease the burden on students. Many are eliminating Friday classes from their traditional Monday-Wednesday-Friday school weeks, or changing schedules that allow students to come to campus only one day a week. Schools also are opening more satellite offices, so students can take courses online.

Gasoline prices are a big concern at York Tech. A student survey this year showed that gas prices are the top personal financial concern for half the students on a campus where a third drive 20 miles or more to get to class. York Tech shortened its weekly schedule in 2006 as gas prices hit $2.77 a gallon, which makes an even bigger difference today, as gas prices hover around $4.

One York Tech student, Melissa Pate, used to drive 100 miles round-trip from her Fort Lawn home to work and then to nursing classes at York Tech. These days, she's taking her remaining classes online and expects to graduate in October.

York Tech always has embraced innovative approaches to helping extend services to students and to allow more students to use those services. At a time when the price of gasoline can be a determining factor in whether a student can afford to attend college, it's reassuring that York Tech and other two-year colleges are addressing the problem in sensible ways.