New Louisiana bill allows colleges to raise tuition up to 10 percent a year

quote:

---

BATON ROUGE — Lawmakers approved a bill this session that will give colleges more control over increases to tuition and fees, but caps increases at 10 percent a year.

Rep. Chris Turner, D- Ruston, said he sponsored House BIll 1084 because colleges cannot keep doing more with less.

“The state hasn’t done a great job of funding our universities, as y’all know,” he told the Senate Education Committee when he presented the bill.

Allowing schools to raise tuition gives them the tools they need to improve what they are providing for students.

Norby Chabert, a former state senator and current political consultant representing Nichols State University, said the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or TOPS, led to taking tuition decisions away from the people who run the universities.

---

quote:

---

“We’ve been playing the shell game,” he told the Senate Education Committee.

TOPS started in 1998 and quickly became so popular that it created a huge expense for the state. To manage that expense, lawmakers did not allow universities to raise tuition on their own. Universities learned that they could increase fees – costs beyond tuition, which were not covered by TOPS.

New fees and fee increases surprised, and irritated, students and their parents.

Turner said the legislature disconnected tuition levels from TOPS funding over several years, which left students with a scholarship that covered only a portion of the cost of higher education.

Turner’s bill initially had no limits on how much universities could raise tuition. A House amendment limited it to 15 percent. A Senate amendment decreased that to 10 percent.

Chabert said the bill gives university leaders a path to “provide a quality education and not just a cheap one.”

---

quote:

---

During House and Senate committee hearings on the bill, lawmakers said they were concerned about making it harder for students to pay for college. Some were worried that students concerned about costs will simply not pursue college. Students could feel pressured to take out student loans that will take decades to repay.

“I worked three jobs when I was in school,” Chabert told the House Education Committee.

The administrators who make these decisions will have an incentive not to raise tuition beyond what the university needs to operate effectively, because students have the option of choosing a different university, a community college or a technical school.

Chabert said the bill gives university leaders a path to “provide a quality education and not just a cheap one.”

He said the change will “provide transparency” and will allow lawmakers to hold university leaders accountable.

“It’s going to be a sink or swim, free market thing,” he said.

Turner told both Senate and House committees that he knows it’s a “tough vote” because no one wants to make it harder for people to go to college.

But better schools will balance cost with improvements because “they money goes where the student goes.”

---

quote:

---

The Senate passed the amended bill 34-2, and the House then approved it 90-6.

The House speaker signed the bill Sunday and the Senate president signed it Monday. It now heads to the governor.

---