Texas Legislative Guide

Lawmakers upset with the climbing cost of college began 2015 with high hopes for new limits on tuition increases.

And several of them – Democrats and Republicans alike – filed bills seeking to slow or block tuition growth, noting that the statewide average for tuition has more than doubled since the Legislature stopped regulating it in 2003. 

But almost all of those bills stalled early in the legislative session. And by the final days of the legislative session, hope had faded; all the bills seeking to regulate state schools’ tuition had died. 

Some of the top advocates for tuition regulation are already turning their sights to the 2017 session. 

Schools will likely continue to fight back; they have argued that lawmakers were smart to give up the right to limit tuition, in part because state funding was covering a smaller and smaller share of universities’ budgets.

Updated: May 27, 2015