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News

Measures may ease tuition burden

by CASEY WOOTEN
The Daily Cougar

In response to the decades-long pattern of increasing tuition, some legislators in Washington and Austin have introduced bills to help curb the rising cost of college.

Over the past five years, four-year college tuition rates have risen 35 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to a College Board study. 

The average tuition rate at a four-year public college was $5,836 in 2006-07, a $344 increase over the previous academic year.

Two national bills -- one proposed in the House, the other in the Senate -- could help defray those rising costs for both incoming students and those already in college. 

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 356 to 71 to pass the College Student Relief Act, a bill introduced Jan. 17 by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. 

The bill calls for interest rates in federally subsidized Stafford loans to be cut in half over the course of five years. The rate would eventually fall from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. 

The bill is currently in committee in the Senate.

"Helping all qualified students pursue higher education is good for our nation's economy, for our competitiveness, for our security and for our future," Miller said in a press release. 

"In the new Congress, we must continue to do everything possible to address rising costs so that no qualified student is prevented from going to college because of the price."

President Bush opposes the bill, however, and may eventually use his veto power against it.

The Department of Education, led by UH alumna Secretary Margaret Spellings, has also come out against the bill, saying that it would not aid students currently in or about to enter college.

"Reducing student loan interest rates would direct federal subsidies to college graduates, not to students and their families who are struggling to meet current and future educational expenses. … Furthermore, encouraging more student debt can also fuel today's upward tuition spiral," an official White House Office of Management and Budget statement said.

The Bush administration supports an increase in Pell Grants to low-income students instead.

The second of the two bills was introduced Jan. 16 by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. 

The Non-Traditional Student Success Act is still in committee and has yet to be voted on. 

It is the second time Sen. Clinton has introduced the bill -- it was first introduced in Congress in 2004, when it remained in committee and never became law. 

If the bill passes, students working or raising families would receive more tax credit on tuition and living expenses. The percentage would increase to 50 percent from 20 percent in terms of the amount of expenses that would be eligible for the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit, a program that now gives a 20 percent tax credit on the first $5,000 of tuition for those seeking continuing education. It would also increase the maximum amount offered by Pell grants to $12,600 from $4,050.

"College tuition has gone up every year for the last 25 years, making it more difficult for students and their families to afford college," Clinton said in a press release. 

"This bill would enable non-traditional students to create a better future for themselves."

Clinton's bill is currently being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Finance.

Texas lawmakers are also making attempts to stem rising college costs. 

Among the bills introduced in the Texas Legislature's 80th session is one to help incoming students. 

The bill submitted by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano would lock in tuition rates for incoming freshmen for their four- or five-year degree plans. 

"I think we need some stability for parents to know how much money parents are going to have to spend," Shapiro told the Houston Chronicle.

According to Senate Bill No. 100, a university may not charge "a rate that exceeds the rate in effect for that course during the student's freshman year." In short, the university must charge the student for a senior level course the rate it would have cost the student during his or her freshman year. The bill would also affect transfer students. 

If the bill passes, it would most likely begin to affect all Texas students entering school in Fall 2007. The bill is being reviewed by the Subcommittee on Higher Education, which Shapiro chairs.

The bill is a reaction to the rise in tuition following the Legislature's deregulation of tuition rates in 2003. 

Deregulation took the power to set tuition away from the state and put it in the hands of individual universities.

Since that time, tuition at Texas public institutions has jumped an average of 40 percent. 

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Jan. 25 he will ask senators for hundreds of millions of dollars in increased financial aid for college students in exchange for Texas universities promising to keep their tuition in check, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"If they tell us that they're not going to raise tuition or it's going to be ... 2 percent, 3 percent, they'll do what they say they're going to do," he told the Austin American-Statesman.

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