House passes HB 75; grants scholarships
The jury is out on House Bill 75: It won’t take the sting out of nonresident tuition, but it just might make life a little easier for a select few.
The substitute bill, designed to grant tuition waivers to out-of-state students in an attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of last year’s House Bill 331, passed muster on the House floor Wednesday.
The proposed law will authorize the State Board of Regents to grant 500 nonresident tuition scholarships to attract students from other states. The scholarships will be divided among universities based on the effects of residency changes.
However, the measure was intended to do a lot more.
Originally proposed as an initiative to lower Utah’s residency requirement from 60 to 45 credit hours for nonresident undergraduate students and 30 hours for graduate nonresident students, the bill has been watered down significantly in the face of financial challenges — a fact lamented by student activists across the state.
“Initially, we were very excited about the bill when we heard that it would reduce the residency requirement, but in its current form, it isn’t the solution we were hoping for,” said Utah Student Association President Billy Edwards.
But these are difficult times, and solutions aren’t easy to come by.
“It’s been an unbelievable year. Anything we could have done would have had fiscal ramifications,” Edwards said. “No one would do anything to a bill with a fiscal note.”
And HB 75 came with a price tag of $3.5 million.
“So I guess, in a way, lawmakers had their hands tied,” he continued.
Nate Powell, legislative vice president of the student body at the University of Utah, shared Edwards’ view.
“Just to have something come through is a good thing,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s not what we would have liked.”
What Powell and his cohorts were gunning for was an amendment to grandfather students currently in the system — nonresident students who saw their tuition take a quantum leap with the passage of HB 331.
“That was the problem we tried to express last year, and frankly, the Legislature ignored us,” Powell said. “They had their sights set on the money.”
That money proved elusive.
A study published by Utah Foundation, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit organization, quotes a Board of Regents report in pointing out that of the projected $5 million to be generated by stricter residency requirements, $4.9 million failed to appear.
In fact, the bill, without a grandfather clause, did tremendous financial damage to universities that dipped into their own budgets to help defray some of the additional costs to nonresident students.
HB 331 cost Utah State University about $2 million in scholarships created to keep students affected by the legislation from dropping out of school. The money may not be recovered.
“The new law does not address [the budget blow] institutions took,” Powell said. “The bill is designed more to help students who are not presently at any institution, but who might come [to attend Utah schools].”
Still, HB 75 is a step in the right direction.
“HB 331 drove out-of-state students away — quickly and without any time for [universities] to adjust to the budget impacts of the legislation,” said Associated Students of USU President Celestial Bybee. “HB 75 gives us time to phase into the
situation.”
Student leaders urged campuses across the state to sound battle cries.
“It’s important for the college-age demographic to get more active,” Edwards said. “If they [lawmakers] realize that 130,000 college students are watching their actions closely, they will make higher education a priority.”
He has three suggestions to offer: “Register to vote, make sure you know where candidates stand on higher education, and read newspapers when issues come up so that you can e-mail your representatives and senators.”
–leon@cc.usu.edu