| TO: | Honorable Judith Zaffirini, Chair, Senate Committee on Higher Education |
| FROM: | John S. O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB708 by Rose (Relating to higher education transfer practices, articulation agreements, policies for dropping courses, and special-purpose centers and to the formula funding for certain credit hours.), As Engrossed |
Under the provisions of the Section 1 of the bill, the limitation on the number of courses that could be dropped by a student would not apply to public junior colleges.
Under Section 2 of the bill, semester credit hours earned before a student graduates from high school that are used to satisfy high school graduation requirements would not be counted for purposes of determining whether the student has exceeded the limit of semester credit hours that can be counted for formula funding.
Section 3 of the bill would require each institution of higher education, in a format adopted by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, to publish all institutional and statewide articulation agreements in its course catalogs and on its website. Each institution would include the expiration dates for each published articulation agreement on its website and remove expired agreements within 30 days. The bill would direct the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to make recommendations, no later than September 30 of each even-numbered year, to improve the dissemination of transfer information to students and institution participation in articulation agreements. Students would be entitled to transfer to another institution under an articulation agreement within four years of first enrollment. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board indicates that it could absorb the costs associated with the bill within its current resources.
Section 4 of the bill would establish the Texas Hurricane Center for Innovative Technology as part of the University of Houston's College of Engineering. The institution estimates that establishing the Center could be done within existing resources.
| Source Agencies: | 783 University of Houston System Administration, 781 Higher Education Coordinating Board
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| LBB Staff: | JOB, KK, RT, GO, JD, SDE
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