ISSUE 4: March 5, 2007

That Was Then...

 

Fiscal First Look
The House Appropriations Committee (HAC), which had been lagging behind the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) meeting-wise, unveiled its preliminary higher education budget proposal Thursday and Friday. Although almost everything presented by the Education Subcommittee was left pending, the presentations offered a glimpse of where the House is headed on higher ed spending for the 2008-09 fiscal biennium.

The subcommittee is proposing a $35.2 million general revenue (GR) increase in formula funding to hold general academic institutions (GAIs) harmless. That means that no GAI would lose more than 3 percent of its current (FY 06-07) formula appropriation. The subcommittee would also increase GR by $23.4 million for all institutions due to the Legislative Budget Board staff’s revised statutory tuition revenue estimate.

Subcommittee Chair Lois Kolkhorst (Brenham) said that the proposal would fund about half of Gov. Rick Perry’s recommendation for student financial aid. The subcommittee would increase GR by $150 million above the base for the biennium, allocated as follows:

• TEXAS Grants – an additional $120 million for a total of $455 million (new money plus base), meeting about 60 percent of estimated student needs.
• B-on-Time Loans – an additional $5 million for a total of $40 million (new money plus base).
• Work-study – an additional $5 million.
• Texas Educational Opportunity Grant (formerly TEXAS Grant II) – an additional $5 million.
• A new state matching program targeting the middle class using $15 million in GR to combine with the designated tuition set-aside funds. (This program currently has no name.)

Kolkhorst’s panel also would amend the budget to account for reductions in the rate per weighted semester credit hour in the Instruction & Operations Formula (from $59.93 to $59.02) and the average weight per square foot in the Infrastructure Support Formula (from $6.37 to $6.27).

Among other highlights:

• A $175 million biennial increase in GR for the Higher Education Fund to $525 million. (Note: This recommendation, which refers to the biennial appropriation commonly known as the Higher Education Assistance Fund, was adopted.  The legislature by law authorized this increase during the previous regular session.)
• Anticipated biennial growth of $172 billion for the Available University Fund.
• A $3 million biennial GR increase for the Professional Nursing Shortage Reduction Program at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB).
• A total of $211.7 million in GR for Tuition Equalization Grants (funded flat from the current biennium, no additional money added).

Kolkhorst emphasized that tuition revenue bond funding is an additional source of “pure” taxpayer support for institutions’ facilities and construction projects.

Referring to a key element of Gov. Perry’s plan, Kolkhorst said that some incentive funding may be included “to get colleges to chase that money” for various programs and activities. She observed that colleges typically dislike incentive funding because it complicates revenue forecasting. Regarding another aspect of the Governor’s plan, Kolkhorst said it would replace all institutional enhancement with formula funding, which would hurt smaller schools severely. “It would close down UT Brownsville, and we’re not going to do that,” she said. Kolkhorst termed the move a flaw that would require a new funding mechanism for smaller campuses.

The recommendations for the health-related institutions include:

• An $18.75 million biennial GR increase to pay for increasing the weight for biomedical sciences (from 1.018 to 1.292) and creating a new weight for nursing graduates (1.252). The base value per weighted student would increase from $10,544 to $10,625. Institutions qualifying for the new weights would not qualify for the Small Enrollment Supplement.
• A $5 million biennial increase in GR for the Instruction & Operations Formula.
• A weight-per-square-foot increase in the Infrastructure Support Formula from $8.08 to $8.10, according to the THECB’s Space Projection Model.
• Weighted student rate increases for the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT HC Tyler, from $7.62 to $7.63.
• A $3.36 million biennial transfer from the THECB’s graduate medical education (GME) budget to the GME funding formula, plus a $4 million biennial GR increase in the GME Formula, raising the base value per student from $4,680 to $5,958 per year.
• Changing the Mission-specific Formula criterion for MD Anderson from the number of new cancer cases to total patients served.

Rep. Kolkhorst remarked about the subcommittee’s commitment to increase residency positions and the balance with medical undergraduates as budget deliberations continue.

HAC Chair Warren Chisum (Pampa) announced that higher ed rider recommendations will be heard this week, along with those for the rest of education and the general government agencies. He intends to have all fiscal decisions made by Friday and vote out the GAA on Monday, March 19.

Meanwhile, the SFC workgroups continue to meet; Sen. Shapiro’s workgroup, which includes the GAIs, meets today. Full SFC mark-up is set for March 14.

> NEW Read a detailed summary

> NEW View markup spreadsheets (GAI) (HRI)

Fiscal Nuts and Budget Bolts

The budget-writing committees’ regular meeting times and places, clerks and phone numbers are:

House Appropriations – 8 a.m. daily (usually, and upon House adjournment as needed)
E1.030 (HAC Hearing Room, Capitol Extension 1st floor)
Cristina Self, 463-1091

Senate Finance – 8 a.m. daily (usually, and upon Senate adjournment as needed)
E1.036 (SFC Hearing Room, Capitol Extension 1st floor)
Amy Jeter, 463-0370

From session to session, the two houses alternate writing the initial version of the appropriations bill. The starting point this session is HB 1, but both the SFC and HAC, or the SFC workgroups and HAC subcommittees, have met almost daily. The SFC work sessions likely will occur for another two weeks, even as the HAC wraps up its work. Once both the Senate and the House have approved spending plans, the legislative leadership will appoint a 10-member conference committee to reconcile the differences in the proposed budget and present a compromise bill to each house for approval.

 

Higher Ed Highlights

See You at the Top 10%

For the third time in as many regular sessions, the Legislature again is considering whether to change the so-called “top 10 percent law.”

Last Monday, the House Higher Education Committee heard more than five hours of testimony on eight bills, running the gamut from outright repeal, to limiting the proportion of automatic admissions in entering freshman classes, to tweaking the mechanics of the current statute. The law was enacted in 1997 in the wake of the Hopwood decision prohibiting the use of race and/or ethnicity in college admissions. Texas high school students ranking in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes (based on grade point average) are guaranteed admission to any public university in the state.

Many of them (too many, from the perspective of some) want to go to UT Austin, which admitted 71 percent of its resident freshmen under the law in the fall of 2006. It is the only Texas university with more than half its entering class admitted based on a single criterion.

“This is simply an uncapped entitlement," said UT Austin President William Powers. "Even with the best intentions, uncapped entitlements will grow out of control.” Noting that 24,000 Texas students graduated in the top 10 percent last year, he predicted that they would comprise the entire entering class in the near future and exceed UT’s capacity to admit them all.

As he has previously, Powers called for capping the amount of top-10-percent admissions at 40-50 percent and admitting the rest using holistic review. That approach allows officials to consider other objective factors, including test scores, extracurricular activities and (since 2003) race/ethnicity, plus more subjective ones such as leadership, personal achievement and family background.

Most of the testimony focused on HB 1186 by Chair Geanie Morrison (Victoria). Her bill would allow only half of an entering class to be admitted based on top-10-percent rank. The rest of the class would be admitted, if they had taken the advanced high school curriculum, by percentile rank in their graduating classes, with all applicants within each percentile offered admission until all available slots were filled.

The fall 2006 entering class was the most racially and ethnically diverse in UT Austin’s history, Powers noted. But he argued that the law actually works against racial and ethnic diversity by limiting the number of students who can be considered on that basis. Because one in every four top-10-percent graduate is Hispanic or African American, he maintained there is in effect a ceiling on minority enrollment. Pointing to UT’s recruiting efforts bolstered by scholarships, Powers claimed that the school could become more diverse on its own.

Rep. Helen Giddings (Dallas) noted that UT Austin is not yet at 25 percent enrollment for Hispanics and African Americans. She voiced skepticism that the school could become more ethnically diverse without the law.

“If we don’t find a way to make our universities reflect the population of our state, we’re all going to suffer,” Giddings said.

As it has in the past, the debate pairs in opposition those who view the law as a non-discriminatory, merit-based means of achieving diversity, both racial and geographic, and those who see it as unfairly penalizing high-achieving graduates of competitive high schools who are being forced to go to college out of state.

Superintendent Cathy Bryce of Highland Park Independent School District said that UT Austin and Texas A&M are backups for many graduates in the top 10 percent there. College aptitude test scores of the second quartile of Highland Park graduates exceed the average score for entering UT freshmen, yet those students are being displaced. UT alumnus Lee Moncrief of Houston claimed that this phenomenon is occurring at no other flagship university in the nation. He argued that the law is diluting UT scholastically (despite evidence that top-10-percenters do as well as or better in the classroom than other students). He urged more emphasis on test scores, claiming that some non-top-10-percenters with higher test scores posted better college grades.

Moncrief, who has worked to overturn the law, suggested that it be sunsetted if not repealed, but acknowledged the “political reality” involved. Rep. Roberto Alonzo (Dallas) said he fears a regression of minority enrollment gains if the law is changed or done away with.

Luis Figueroa, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said the law is fulfilling its purpose to level the playing field for the Texas public college admissions process.  Any admissions cap should be applied only to UT Austin, he said, which had been fed largely by a relatively few suburban high schools prior to the law. Ending it would hamper diversity efforts, he said, noting that A&M uses a race-blind admissions process. Figueroa claimed that, although the law is both an incentive and a recruiting tool, many minority students and families remain unaware of it.

The other cap bill was presented by Rep. Dan Branch (Dallas). HB 78 would limit top-10-percent admissions to 40 percent of an incoming freshman class. Branch said he wants to retain the law’s good consequences while tweaking its unintended ones. Texas is a different place now than it was before Hopwood, he said, and minorities should do better in admissions at colleges’ discretion. But he fears a loss of innovative, creative young leaders if the law remains in its current form.

If a university wants to opt out of the top 10 percent law, Rep. Harold Dutton (Houston) said his HB 794 allows it to do so if its student body’s demographics match or exceed that of its football team. He claimed that the law is not being applied consistently because athletes are admitted based on physical capabilities regardless of class rank. He said the same admissions standards should be applied to all students. Dutton argued that schools would seek and find minority students if there were incentives in the schools’ interests.

HB 400 by Rep. Tony Goolsby (Dallas) would curtail the number of automatic admissions by raising the class rank threshold to the top 7.5 percent, reducing the potential number of enrollees by a fourth. Goolsby offered his support for HB 1186 and suggested his bill be voted out as a backup plan.

Rep. Rob Eissler (The Woodlands) would spread out automatic admissions across university systems, as in California. HB 415 would guarantee top-10-percent graduates admission to the system of their choice. The system would consider student preferences but have the right to admit the students to any school within the system. Eissler maintained that his bill would retain more top students in Texas, encourage colleges to specialize, and lead to another flagship institution.

Rep. Beverly Woolley (Houston) offered HB 212 to repeal the law, which she claimed has generated more complaints from her constituents than any other issue. She said that some of the high schools in her district are so competitive that good students can’t even get into the top 10 percent of their own classes. Using only one criterion for admission flies in the face of the 19-20 suggested by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, she said.

HB 383 by Rep. Dennis Bonnen (Angleton) would extend the eligibility period for automatic admission by an extra year. He said this would allow students to attend a local community college first and still be admitted automatically to a public four-year university if they maintained a 3.25 GPA. Bonnen cited instances where students needed to wait a year or deal with family or personal matters, and they should not have to forfeit admission if they graduated in the top 10 percent.

Rep. Mike Villarreal (San Antonio) said he authored HB 695 to protect students from uncertainty caused by changes in the size of their graduating classes. He gave one example of a student who lost her top 10 percent ranking because of her class’s high dropout rate, which reduced the base on which the rankings were determined. HB 695 would use class enrollment as of October 1 of the senior year to calculate class rank.

All eight bills were left pending. Morrison asked for the other committee members’ input and promised to work together to craft a compromise bill to take to the House floor.

Watch archived hearing.

This Is Now...

Tuition Lite, Fee Simple

The first raft of tuition and fee bills floats into the House Higher Education Committee at 8 a.m. today. None of them deal with tuition flexibility (aka deregulation), but some of them are noteworthy nonetheless.

HB 86 by Branch offers tuition rebates to eligible undergraduate students who graduate within the time to qualify for forgiveness of a Texas B-on-Time Loan and who have attempted no more than three hours in excess of the minimum number of semester credit hours required to complete the degree program. The rebate is generally $1,000 and must be paid by the institution from local funds.  The bill also requires the Legislature to account for the rebates in the General Appropriations Act by providing a corresponding increase in the institution’s general revenue appropriation, but this requirement is unenforceable.  Therefore, an institution should not count on an increase in general revenue to make up for the use of its local funds for the rebate program.   

The bill would exclude semester credit hours earned to meet requirements of an ROTC program from counting toward the hour limitation imposed on tuition rebates to students who graduate with no more than three credit hours above the minimum requirements of their degree program.  UT institutions with ROTC programs might see an increase in the number of students that would qualify for the $1,000 tuition rebate. 

HB 1187 by Morrison requires the Texas Veterans Commission to establish a program to issue vouchers to be exchanged for an exemption from the payment of tuition and required fees at an institution of higher education to students in grades 6-12 or at post-secondary educational institutions who play "Taps" during military honors funerals held in Texas for deceased veterans. The amount of the non-transferable voucher is $25 per occurrence, and it may be used at any time. The governing board of a public institution of higher education is required to provide the $25 exemption in exchange for each voucher presented by a student to the institution. System institutions would be required to honor the vouchers in exchange for tuition and fee payment or exemption. This bill would create an additional exemption program requiring the development of procedures to accept and validate vouchers presented by students.

HB 741 by T. King exempts from the payment of "all dues, fees, and charges" any person whose parent is a volunteer municipal, county, or state peace officer and who has suffered an injury in the line of duty resulting in death or disability.  (The caption of the bill indicates that this covers tuition and fees.)  The procedures are the same as those currently in place for determining eligibility of children of firefighters and paid peace officers. While this bill has minimal fiscal impact on its own, when combined with existing exemptions and additional exemptions being proposed, the combined effect can be significant.

HB 868 by Haggerty authorizes the Board of Regents to raise the recreational facility fee at UT El Paso from $12 per student to $70 per student for a term or semester of 10 weeks or more, or $50 for any other term or semester.  The increase will allow for expansion of the current Swimming and Fitness Center facility, in accordance with the stated request of the UTEP Student Government Association. The fee may not be increased unless the amount of the increase is approved by a majority vote of the students participating in a general student election called for that purpose.  (Current law requires the fee to be approved and set at the election.)  The bill applies to fees charged beginning with the 2007 fall semester

HB 1157 by West authorizes the Board of Regents to charge a student services building fee at UT Permian Basin.  The fee may not exceed $150 for each regular semester, $75 for each summer session of more than six weeks, or $50 for each summer session of six weeks or less. The fee may not be increased by more than 10 percent unless the amount of the increase is approved by a majority vote of the students participating in a general student election held for that purpose. The fee must be deposited in UTPB’s student services building account and may be used only for a student services building.  The fee is in addition to any other fee the board may charge at the university and may not be considered in determining the maximum student services fee that may be charged under the student service fee cap. 

HB 1505 by Lucio authorizes the Board of Regents to impose an intercollegiate athletics fee at UT Brownsville in an amount not to exceed $7 per semester credit hour, beginning in the fall semester of 2008.  The fee is deposited to the credit of the UT Brownsville intercollegiate athletics fee account to be used in accordance with the terms of the partnership agreements entered into between UT Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. The board may not increase the fee amount by more than 10 percent from one academic year to the next unless the amount of the increase is approved by a majority vote of the students participating in a general student election held for that purpose, as well as a majority of the members of the legislative body of the university's student government. The revenue generated by the fee, which is estimated to be $1.9 million per year, would allow UTB to develop both existing and new athletic programs. Since UTB is currently utilizing student services fees to support its athletic programs, these new revenues would allow UTB to redirect current student services fees being expended on athletics.   

Watch live hearing.

On the Senate side Monday at 1:30 p.m., the Higher Education Subcommittee will consider one tuition and fee bill, SB 89 by Van de Putte. It would modify the residency requirements for tuition and fee exemptions for military personnel and their dependents under the federal Hazlewood Act.  Currently, a veteran must have been a citizen of Texas upon entering military service. The bill requires veterans to have declared Texas as their home of record when they entered the service. Veterans who did not make the declaration would not be eligible for the exemption unless they had already received it in the 2006-07 academic year and met the law’s other requirements. This could result in fewer exemptions being granted.  

What's in a Name

Also Monday, the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee will consider SB 276 by Wentworth, which would add more disclosure to the student regent selection process.  Under current law, the student government of each academic or medical institution in a university system solicits applications for the position, selects five applicants, and sends their applications to the chancellor after removing the applicants’ names and the name of the institution.  Institutions not part of a system follow the same process, except that the applications are sent to the president with the name of each applicant removed.  From those applications, the chancellor or president then make recommendations to the governor.  The governor may request to review the deleted information before making the appointment.

This bill would repeal the requirement to remove  applicants' names and the names of the schools from the applications submitted to the chancellors or presidents. This would allow them to see the names of each student regent applicant submitted to them, as well as the names of the institutions in which the applicants are enrolled.

Watch live hearing.

Session Snapshot

 

Week	9
Days Remaining	85
Bills/Joint Resolutions Filed	3,586
Bills/Joint Resolutions Passed*
>House	4
>Senate	2
Bills Tracked	1,111
High Priority Bills	212

*by one house; none enacted to date

Legislative deadlines and other important dates may be found at Key Legislative Dates.

The bill filing deadline is Friday, March 9, the 60th day of the session.

Gov. Rick Perry has designated eight matters as emergencies (see press releases on emergency issues and additional issues). This means that lawmakers may consider bills on these subjects during the session’s first 60 days, when they otherwise are precluded by the Texas Constitution from passing legislation.

House Committees’ permanent meeting schedules

NEW Senate Committees’ permanent meeting schedules

Duly Noted

On Tuesday, as the House considered HB 8, the sexual predator bill being called “Jessica’s Law,” this exchange occurred between Rep. Harold Dutton (Houston), who was trying to change a statute of limitations provision, and the bill’s author, Rep. Debbie Riddle (Houston):
 
Riddle: “Mr. Speaker, I move to table.”

Speaker Tom Craddick: “The chair recognizes Mr. Dutton to close.”

Dutton: “Well, I move not to table.” (laughter)

His motion was tabled nonetheless, 89-50. Eventually, a vote on the bill was postponed until today.