Lawmakers advanced proposals Wednesday to let public colleges raise their own tuition and fee rates, hoping to help campuses threatened with hefty budget cuts from the state.

The House and Senate education committees approved without objection several bills that would remove the Legislature from setting tuition and fees, leaving those decisions instead to the college system management boards.

The proposals vary. Some apply only to graduate programs or only to fees. The bills allowing for undergraduate student tuition increases differ in the House and Senate in how they link to the TOPS free college tuition program.

Higher education leaders are pushing the legislation to help them fill budget gaps from state cuts. Debates in both committees centered on the schools’ financial woes.

“Money is extinct. It’s not even there at the campuses. But all of us know how important our universities, our community and technical college system are to the future of our state,” said Rep. Chris Broadwater, R-Hammond and sponsor of a bill to let schools raise fees without legislative approval.

House Bill 66, by Rep. Thomas Carmody, R-Shreveport, would authorize higher ed institutions to establish their own base tuition and tuition enhancements. It would also allow them to set differential tuition, an amount that deviates from the base tuition based on students’ major; tiered tuition; and tuition for part-time students or summer school.

The schools would have to create a procedure for setting the tuition or fee amounts and hold a public hearing for any new tuition or fee, or an increase to existing costs. The measure excludes additional costs implemented by an institution after Dec. 1, 2015, from being paid under the TOPS program or becoming effective during an ongoing semester or term.

One amendment to the bill removed a provision that required charging the Southern regional average to out-of-state students. Carmody said schools are trying to bring back “legacy students” who live out of state, but whose parents attended college in Louisiana. Charging the Southern average, he said, would hamper the ability to bring those students back.

Carmody said the legislation is designed to allow state lawmakers to increase money through the TOPS program to cover tuition increases, should the state’s financial situation improve.

The state Legislature must get a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to approve any fee increases, including tuition and fees charged by colleges and universities within the state. Carmody also has filed House Bill 61, a constitutional amendment that would remove the tuition and fees charged by colleges and universities from the two-thirds legislative vote and from the managerial authority of the various postsecondary education management boards. The bill is set to be heard by the House Governmental Affairs Committee.

“To be the lone Legislature in the country to do that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he said of the two-thirds vote.

Another measure by Carmody, House Bill 60, would create the Louisiana Postsecondary Education Board of Trustees as a single governing board for higher education. The existing management boards, including the Board of Regents, would be abolished. It is set to be heard by the House Education Committee.

The Senate tuition bill by Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, is tied to a separate Donahue proposal that would add cost controls to TOPS.

The TOPS tuition payment rate would be locked in at the 2015-16 level. Rather than the current automatic increases whenever tuition costs rise on college campuses, boosts to TOPS payments in the 2016-17 school year and beyond would have to get separate approval from lawmakers. That would free colleges to raise their charges without increasing state costs.

“This helps manage the growth of TOPS,” Donahue said.

Jindal opposes the TOPS changes. His assistant chief of staff, Stafford Palmieri, said the bill would harm a program that has increased students’ likelihood of going to college and graduating.

Donahue’s TOPS bill squeaked out of committee on a 4-3 vote.

Louisiana Legislature

MSgt Toby M. Valadie