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Senate Bill 1764 |
Senate Author: Watson |
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Effective: 6-19-09 |
House Sponsor: Cohen |
Senate Bill 1764 amends the Education Code to require the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to prescribe uniform standards to ensure that information regarding the cost of attendance at institutions of higher education is available to the public in a manner that is consumer-friendly and readily understandable to prospective students and their families. The bill requires the standards to address all of the elements that constitute the total cost of attendance and to prescribe model language to be used to describe each such element. The bill requires each institution of higher education that offers an undergraduate degree or certificate program to prominently display on its Internet website in accordance with the uniform standards information regarding the cost of attendance at the institution by a full-time entering first-year student, to conform to the uniform standards in any electronic or printed materials intended to provide to prospective undergraduate students information regarding the cost of attendance, and to consider the uniform standards when providing information to the public or to prospective students regarding the attendance costs for nonresident students, graduate students, or students enrolled in professional programs.
The bill requires the coordinating board to prescribe requirements for an institution to provide on the institution's website consumer-friendly and readily understandable information regarding student financial aid opportunities, which must be provided in connection with the required display of information regarding the cost of attendance by a full-time entering first-year student and must include a link to the primary federal student financial aid website intended to assist applicants for student financial aid.
The bill requires the coordinating board to provide on the board's website a program or tool that will compute the estimated net cost of attendance for a full-time entering first-year student attending an institution of higher education. The bill requires the coordinating board to require each institution to provide the information necessary to administer this provision. The bill requires the coordinating board to prescribe the initial standards and requirements under the bill's provisions not later than January 1, 2010, and to require institutions of higher education to comply with the standards and requirements not later than April l, 2010.
The bill requires the coordinating board to encourage private or independent institutions of higher education approved to participate in the tuition equalization grant program, to the greatest extent practicable, to implement the practices required of public institutions regarding the display of the information described in the uniform standards on their websites and in electronic and printed materials and the inclusion of a link on their websites to the federal student financial aid website described above. The bill requires the coordinating board to make the net cost computation program or tool described above available to private or independent institutions of higher education and requires those institutions to make that program or tool, or another program or tool that complies with the net price calculator requirements of the federal Higher Education Act of 1965, available on their websites by a certain date.