BLOOMFIELD HILLS — In 2013 the Oakland Community College (OCC) Board of Trustees voted to hike tuition for international students by almost 43 percent, which discourages international student enrollment.

The tuition hike also affected students that held Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status. This spring, a very large group of concerned community members, faculty and affected DACA students came together to bring attention to the issue through social media. OCC responded with a task force to investigate the issue and make recommendations on last year’s policy change to the trustees. The recommendation is to rollback tuition for F-1 students and to give in-district rates to resident DACA students.

On Tuesday, the trustees were expected to vote on whether to accept or reject the task force recommendations. 

 “In a time when Governor Snyder is talking about bringing more immigrants to Michigan, we were seeing OCC reject them,” said Raquel Garcia Andersen, immigrants rights organizer with Michigan United. “We were questioning whether or not OCC was reading the newspapers. We are happy that they moved in record time to remedy this problem…The last thing we need is for international students to feel that they are being priced-out of access or for DACA students that have been raised in Oakland County for most of their lives to feel that they are being discriminated against.”