Vance Ginn, PhD, is chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute in Austin.
Texas’s public higher education systems can withstand a temporary tuition freeze. SB 167 would freeze tuition for 5 years in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and tuition would be adjusted by the previous year’s change in the consumer price index (CPI). This sort of freeze will be a step in the right direction, and the temporary nature of the freeze will allow for the results of this action to be evaluated to determine if it is working better than the current flawed approach. Tuition freezes have been successfully instituted by other public colleges.
Testimony in Support to the Texas Senate Committee on Higher Education