As the end of the school year approaches, many parents and seniors are trying to figure out how to pay for college in Texas, where tuition at public universities is rising an average of 6 percent per year, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

In the Lake Houston area, some families are coping with the increased costs by planning for college earlier while others are forced to shift funds that would have been used for retirement toward higher education, said Trey Hill, the financial adviser at Edward Jones in Kingwood.

“My oldest is 10 years old, and the projected costs if they go to school full time will be about $150,000 at a public college,” Hill said. “What we see and what I see personally is you’re almost shifting that focus to ‘I would like to do something, but the realism of being able to contribute
100 percent has been pretty diminished.’”

In an attempt to address the rapid rise in tuition, dozens of bills have been filed this session in the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to tuition rules and regulations, including Senate Bills 18 and 19, which were named priorities by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

“Senate Bills 18 and 19 are critical to ensure higher education tuition and fees do not continue to outpace what hard-working Texans earn,” Patrick said. “Making college more affordable for all Texans continues to be one of my top priorities this legislative session.”

Proponents of the legislation—including some Houston-area legislators—support the help the bills could provide prospective postsecondary students. Local colleges suggest tuition increases over the past few years are a result of less state aid and the need to provide more services to students.

“We’re being asked to do more with less,” said Matthew Fuller, associate professor of higher education leadership at Sam Houston State University.

Legislative solutions

In January, Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, filed SB 18 and SB 19. SB 18 would eliminate a rule requiring public universities to use a portion of tuition revenue to fund scholarships for students with financial need; SB 19 would freeze tuition prices for students for four years. 

Another bill, SB 543, also filed by Seliger, would require state schools to meet performance-based metrics—such as graduation rates, the number of undergraduate degrees awarded and average length of student enrollment—before being allowed to raise tuition.

“Tuition relief and predictability is necessary for Texas students and families,” Seliger said. “SB 19 provides much-needed stability for those planning to attend or attending college. Together with SB 543, we will have the opportunity to implement a long-term tuition reform solution.”

As of press time, SB 19 and SB 543 were in committee, and SB 18 had been voted out of committee. If passed, these laws would go into effect Sept. 1.

Raymund Paredes, higher education commissioner for the THECB, said it would be difficult to assess how the bills would affect universities and students. He said attempts in other states, such as California and Montana, to freeze tuition costs have resulted only in offsetting costs temporarily, with a return to deregulated prices immediately after the freeze.

“Sometimes, the tuition freezes essentially result in delaying increases for a couple of years, and then when the regulation expires, the institutions raise the tuition to exactly the same level that they would have if they had raised tuition incrementally,” Paredes said.

This session, the THECB is advocating the Legislature for a number of measures to help students pay for college, including increased paid internships, such as providing more work-study programs and implementing programs to award university credits for outside work.

“We can’t get to our goals doing business as usual,” he said. “We’re going to substantially have to reinvent higher education.”

Tuition on the Rise

Although tuition has increased in recent years, the price of attending a higher education institution was not always decided at the university level.

In 2003, the 78th Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3015, which granted public universities the ability to charge varying tuition rates with no cap on the designated tuition per academic period. Prior to HB 3015, the Legislature had the authority to mandate the same rate be charged across the state for public higher education institutions, according to the THECB.

Since tuition was deregulated, it has risen at public universities by as much as 178 percent—or an average of 70 percent after adjusting for inflation—from 2003 to 2015, with students paying a statewide average of $1,687 more per semester, according to the THECB. 

At the University of Houston, total tuition rose from $2,266 per semester to $5,404 per semester from 2003 to 2015, a 139 percent increase. Meanwhile, tuition at Texas A&M University and SHSU increased 108 percent and 156 percent, respectively. 

However, the universities attribute such increases to a decrease in state funding per student, enrollment growth and an increase in costs.

“We have to increase our budget to recruit and retain our exceptional faculty, expand [program offerings] and services, and cover fixed cost increases and other cost increases that are driven by enrollment growth,” said Julia May, associate director of communications and public information officer at SHSU. “These increases are necessary to meet the demands that our students expect.”

Fuller said comparing costs before and after deregulation does not take into account yearly costs to maintain buildings, adding campus services and programs to meet enrollment growth and demand, and an increased number of institutions fighting for the same amount of state funding. Other factors, such as investments in campus amenities to attract more students, also play a role in tuition increases. 

Fuller said the state’s funding per student declined by 43 percent from 1987-2012. To bridge the gap, colleges roll some of the cost into tuition.

In 2015 the Legislature allocated $15.1 billion, or 7.2 percent of the total budget, for higher education instruction, financial aid and research. The House introduced an initial budget this session that would allocate $15.6 billion, or 7.1 percent of the House’s total proposed budget. The Senate has also proposed 7.1 percent, or $15.08 billion, of its budget for higher education.   

At Texas A&M, the percentage of the university system’s operating costs composed of state contributions has dropped from 55 percent to 38 percent from 2002 to 2016, according to university officials. At UH, the state’s contributions to the college system decreased from 64 percent to 24 percent from 1994 to 2016, and SHSU’s main Huntsville campus received 38 percent of operating costs from the state in 2016. 

“The No. 1 reason [for tuition increases] is the support of higher education is declining, and we’ve got to make that up somewhere or we’ve got to cut services,” Fuller said. “Since [students] don’t want us to cut services because they want certain degrees, we’ve got to make it up somewhere.”

Affording education

Although Texas ranks seventh nationwide in higher education affordability, students enrolling in a public four-year university in Texas typically must borrow more than $4,400 annually to pay for expenses, according to the 2016 College Affordability Diagnosis from the Penn Graduate School of Education.

Paredes said one of the greatest challenges for colleges and families is finding enough funding to cover all students who need tuition relief. He said as grant money on the state and federal levels falls short, higher education officials will have to find solutions.

“We recognize that the current model of relying on either federal grant aid or state grant aid, primarily through the Texas grant program, will be very difficult to sustain in the future,” he said.

However, universities such as UH are limiting rising costs by implementing programs that freeze tuition for students who meet certain requirements, said Shawn Lindsey, director of media relations and digital programming.

In 2014, UH implemented UH in 4, a fixed-tuition initiative program for freshmen and transfers. Students are required to complete 30 credit hours per year and remain in good academic standing to receive a fixed tuition rate for four consecutive years. Texas A&M also offers a similar program freezing tuition for four years for incoming freshmen.

“The development of these programs and the fixed-tuition model is largely in response to rising tuition statewide fueled by long-term decreasing support from state revenues,” Lindsey said.

Initiatives like tuition freezes could lead more students to attend four-year universities, especially for Humble ISD, which has more students attend community college than universities initially after graduation, said Mendy Knight, a counselor at Quest Early College High School. In Humble ISD, 25 percent of graduates attend a public university, compared with 34 percent who enroll in a community college such as Lone Star College-Kingwood or San Jacinto College, according to district data.

“Many of our students begin at a junior college where the costs are negligible compared to a university,” Knight said. “The costs more than double when they transfer to a university. Many times they are not prepared for that steep jump in tuition costs.”

However, the most important step to plan for college should be preparation, Hill said. Although providing the full cost of attendance for multiple children is out of reach for most families, creating a college fund that minimizes the child’s debt burden is attainable for many people, he said.

“The first step is sitting down with someone and building a plan—trying to figure out where they are today and then where they want to be.” Hill said. “And you’ve got to be able to fill those blanks in. It’s kind of like taking a trip to New York. Are you going to map it out or are you just going to hop in the car and hope that you make it someday.”

Additional reporting
by Emily Donaldson