CMC partnership wants to make online master’s degrees more affordable

Education students at Colorado Mountain College qualify for tuition discounts in an effort to improve teacher shortages in rural mountain districts

By Andrea Teres-Martinez, Swift regional reporter

This story ran in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, the Vail Daily, Summit Daily News and The Aspen Times

Jan. 30, 2026

As rural mountain communities struggle to retain local talent due to high costs of living and housing accessibility challenges, a Colorado Mountain College partnership is giving students direct access to master’s degrees without ever stepping foot outside of their communities.

Colorado State University Global — the first fully online, institutionally accredited public university in the country — has seen a growing interest in its partnership with Colorado Mountain College, particularly due to its promise of supporting workforce needs and strengthening Colorado’s rural economy.

The partnership launched in April 2025, inviting Colorado Mountain College students to pursue flexible, online graduate degrees for a discounted price.

The partnership offers a direct transition into obtaining a master’s degree in the areas of business administration, leadership, and education, with guaranteed admission to CSU Global for students graduating with a 2.3 GPA or higher.

Jess Guarnero, dean of Colorado Mountain College’s Isaacson School for Communication, said the intention behind the partnership was to make higher education more accessible to working adults balancing jobs, family and rural living on top of their studies.

For most of the students living in rural mountain towns, the largest barrier to getting a master’s degree is distance, Guarnero said. Whether a Colorado Mountain College degree was obtained through virtual courses for in-person classes at one of the college’s 11 campuses, their students’ alum status makes them a qualifier for the program regardless of where they end up after graduation.

“I think (the partnership) takes away some of those crazy barriers of trying to have to drive to Denver,” she said. “Do I have to move? Do I have to get a different house? Or a different job? It takes away all those big life changes that can get in the way if you have to just uproot yourself.”

Guarnero, an alumna of CSU Global and Steamboat Springs resident, said improving access to graduate degrees for Colorado Mountain College students had felt like a project for “sometime in the future,” as college advisors and other faculty continued to provide individual support for students wanting to pursue graduate degrees.

While attending a Denver conference back in the fall of 2024, Guarnero learned the CSU Global leadership team were also in attendance and reached out for a conversation.

“(We) said, ‘We would love to give a clear path to graduate degrees for our bachelor’s degree students right when they graduate, and we just don’t want to have to send them away,'” she said. “I know what it’s like to work full time, have a family and do graduate school, so I had a lot of confidence in the product.”

By springtime, the college was holding information sessions for current students and alumni who were thinking about going back to school.

“Once we started sharing within the CMC community about the partnership, I had four or five of our staffers email me directly and say, ‘I went there. It was awesome. It was a great experience, and it was great for my career,'” Guarnero said.

Colorado Mountain College graduates transitioning into a corresponding CSU Global master’s program in the areas of businesses and organizational management receive a 10% tuition discount, or roughly $607 per credit in 2025. Graduates with a 3.0 GPA or higher also get fees waived for their first graduate course.

Those seeking a master’s in education receive an even steeper discount from CSU Global through partnerships from various school districts, which Guarnero said is thanks to Gov. Jared Polis’ push toward educational incentives for in-state teachers.

“The students really do benefit if they choose to do a graduate or certificate … especially for our teachers,” Guarnero said. “They move up a very specific pay scale when they get a master’s degree. And then they get to, if they want to … teach for us as well, which is just exciting.”

Since launching in 2025, Colorado Mountain College has had seven students enroll or be admitted into a qualifying master’s program through its partnership with CSU Global. These students have remained in respective communities during the start of their studies, spread out throughout Breckenridge, Silt, Carbondale, Steamboat Springs, Leadville and Gypsum.

Several of the students enrolled are pursuing a master’s in education. Earlier stats from the CSU Global’s director of strategic partnerships showed that around 75% of the interest in the partnership came from current education students, Guarnero said, which she hopes will support the shortage of educators in rural districts.

An annual state of education report published by the Colorado Education Association found that two of the major factors behind a growing percentage of educators choosing to leave the profession are low pay and unmanageable workloads.

“One of the hardest things to do in a mountain community is keep and retain K-12 teachers,” Guarnero. “So to be able to extend an opportunity to increase their income potential, I think that goes a real long way.”