ST. PAUL, MN – Today, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Higher Education Finance bill on an 86-44 vote. Included in the bill is funding that will directly benefit students by freezing tuition at both the University of Minnesota (U of M) and the Minnesota State Colleges and University system (MnSCU), including Ridgewater College. State Representative Mary Sawatzky (DFL – Willmar) voted in support of the bill.
The bill would increase funding for higher education by $150 million, using most of those resources to freeze in-state resident tuition over the next two years. There will also be $18 million allocated to the MnDrive research program at the University of Minnesota and almost $11 million allocated to the Office of Higher Education to increase grants for access, choice, and debt reduction.
“Over the last decade of deficits, higher education has been continually placed on the cutting block,” said Rep. Sawatzky. “This has caused tuition and student loan debt to skyrocket, pricing our great students out of the high-quality education they need to be successful.
“By 2018, 70 percent of all jobs in Minnesota will require some form of post-secondary education. We have to make sure that our colleges and universities are accessible and affordable if we want our young people, our economy, and our state to succeed. This is a great bill that will help our students and their families, and bring unprecedented accountability to the money spent by our higher education institutions.”
The House bill also includes new reforms to expand the oversight function of the legislature. They are designed to better hold the U of M and MnSCU accountable for budgeting practices that have come under fire for high administrative costs and excessive compensation for top administrators.
The House Higher Education Committee held fourteen hearings on the oversight needed. The committee looked at the dramatic increase in student tuition, fees, and debt over the past six years, examined student-to-faculty ratios, and scrutinized administrative costs and trends over the past decade. The product of that work can be seen in new reforms that were drafted in consultation with the Office of Legislative Auditor to expand the oversight function of the legislature to better hold the U of M and MnSCU accountable for the money they are spending.