The older we get, the more we’re convinced that timing is everything. And now seems a poor time to raise the student activity fee at Johnston Community College by 71 percent — from $38 to $65 a semester. (The college likes to note that it has not raised the fee in 15 years; that should be a matter of pride, not a justification to extract more money from students.)

The chairman of the Federal Reserve has said “recession” out loud, and gas prices are up 200 percent from 1993, when JCC last raised its student fee. That suggests to us that JCC students need more of their money, not less.

Then again, the president of the Student Government Association at JCC says students are happy to pay a higher student fee to field teams in men’s basketball and women’s volleyball. Arnoldo Gonzalez is much closer to JCC students than we are, so we trust he knows what he’s talking about.

Ultimately, support for men’s basketball and women’s volleyball will be a matter for JCC students to decide.

Evidence one way or the other will be in attendance at home games.

What matters to us is that JCC keeps doing what it has always done best — prepare people for the jobs that employers need to fill.

JCC is a lot different now from what it was at its inception nearly 40 years ago. Once strictly a technical school, JCC now prepares young men and women to enroll in four-year colleges. We think that evolution is a good thing.

But JCC and its sister schools in North Carolina have always earned their highest praise for preparing people for the workplace at a modest cost. As long as that remains the mission, we suppose we can say, “Go team.”