WICHE offers tuition savings to CNMI students attending western US colleges and universities

From left, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education vice president Patrick Lane, Northern Marianas College vice president of Administration and Advancement Frankie Eliptico, WICHE president Demaree “Demi” Michelau, WICHE commission chair Matt Freeman, WICHE immediate past chair and president of the University of Hawaii Dr. David Lassner, and NMC president Dr. Galvin Deleon Guerrero pose for a souvenir picture after a news briefing detailing NMC’s WICHE membership that allows CNMI students to save on tuition in western U.S. colleges and universities. (LEIGH GASES)

Three programs under the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education enables CNMI students to save on college tuition when attending western U.S. colleges and universities, according to WICHE officials who are doing a site visit at Northern Marianas College right now.

It was learned during a news briefing yesterday with the WICHE officials that CNMI college students, in fact, saved a total of $1.51 million in the 2022-2023 academic year alone through WICHE’s Student Access Programs.

These programs—Western Undergraduate Exchange, Western Regional Graduate Program, and Professional Student Exchange Program—enable CNMI students attending either of the 16 member states’ college/university under WICHE to save on tuition as they do not have to pay an out-of-state tuition rate, but rather just pay at a rate that’s closer to state-resident tuition.

It was learned that, in the 2022-2023 academic year, CNMI college students saved $1.33 million through WUE, $67,000 through WRGP, and $114,333 through PSEP, according to a WICHE pamphlet distributed in yesterday’s news briefing. The WUE saves undergraduate students, while the WRGP saves students on out-of-state graduate certificate, master’s, and doctoral programs. The PSEP helps students pursuing careers in 10 health fields in which they can enroll in programs in the WICHE region and receive substantial tuition support from their home state/territory.

The 16 member states and territories are the western states of Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the U.S. Pacific Territories and Freely Associated States (CNMI, Guam, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau).

ss conference was organized yesterday morning at the NMC Board of Regents conference room to introduce the visiting group: WICHE president Demaree “Demi” Michelau, WICHE vice president Patrick Lane, WICHE immediate past chair and president of the University of Hawaii Dr. David Lassner, and WICHE commission chair Matt Freeman.

How this NMC-WICHE partnership began, according to Frankie Eliptico, NMC’s vice president of Administration and Advancement, was that they noticed a lot of CNMI college students were going to college in western states.

“Of course, we want all of our students graduating from high schools to come to Northern Marianas College, but we know that we also want to make sure they’re taking advantage of many other universities and colleges that are out there,” he said. “So, we wanted to make sure that they were given an opportunity to save some money and also make sure that the scholarship funds that they were given were going farther, because before, they were paying out-of-state tuition.”

The ultimate goal, Eliptico said, is “to allow them to use their scholarship funds and make it go and last longer and farther, so that they can graduate and the big hope is that they come back to the Commonwealth and apply their skills and knowledge here in the CNMI.”

Even with the range of savings and opportunities elsewhere, NMC has not seen a decline in enrollment from the past few years, according to Eliptico. “The membership really does complement the range of offerings because we cannot be everything to everybody, so we want to make sure that students are accessing programs that we may or we may not have.”

Beyond that, “the network, the association, the advocacy, the research [has ]been critical and the past few years, we’ve been able to lean on WICHE,” said NMC president Dr. Galvin Deleon Guerrero. “President Lassner and Dr. [Michelau] helped us navigate through some mountains of federal legislation. If it weren’t for that membership, we may have missed out on some key funding opportunities. So, it’s more than just helping our students—it’s helping our college, it’s helping all the higher education institutions in the western Pacific.

WICHE has been enhancing higher education, workforce development, and behavioral health in the Western US region since 1953. More information can be found at www.wiche.edu.