Lawmakers want to slow tuition hikes at Texas public universities

Texas universities broke their promise to keep tuition reasonable, lawmakers said, and now they are proposing to freeze the rates schools can charge for higher education. This will be good news for college students and future college students. Legislators gave public universities power to set their own tuition rates in 2003. Since then, tuition prices have skyrocketed upward an average of 53 percent, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. At the University of Texas at El Paso, tuition and fees have grown by 57 percent in the past five years. This has been crazy because I went to UT of El Paso and the tuition was reasonable, but now I bet it something in the UT of Austin range or even higher. One of the senators “Chuy” Hinojosa proposed the Hinojosa's bill, which was filed; tuition rates would be frozen for two years at public universities. After two years, tuition could only increase once per year and at a rate no larger than the growth of inflation. Any hike in university fees would require a majority vote of students. If the lawmakers go against this bill public universities will be like going to a private college, you might as well go to a private college because it will be almost the same price as going to public colleges. Also with the recession going who knows what’s going to happen, and people wouldn’t be able to college anymore.