AUSTIN – Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Higher Education Policy Analyst Trevor McGuire issued the following statement on Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s and Texas State Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kel Seliger’s announcement to address high tuition costs and student debt:
“The cost of tuition in Texas has increased 149 percent since tuition deregulation, almost five times the growth of the median income in Texas over the same period,” said McGuire. “We support the Lt. Governor and Senator Seliger’s plan for addressing the issues of tuition and student debt by considering performance-based funding, the elimination of tuition set-asides, and reining-in excessive administrative costs during the next legislative session. The Legislature should address these three issues, which primarily affect four-year institutions, while also providing sufficient attention and resources to Texas’s community and technical colleges – where both student debt and tuition are much lower than at four-year institutions.
“While the most effective solutions to rising tuition costs and student debt will be those developed collaboratively between the Legislature, colleges and universities, and the Coordinating Board, we are encouraged by the Lt. Governor’s promise to hold university regents more accountable if suitable progress cannot be made toward making Texas higher education more affordable.”
Trevor McGuire is a policy analyst with the Center for Higher Education and Center for Tenth Amendment Action at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.