85R5297 JRJ-D
 
  By: Bettencourt S.B. No. 598
 
 
 
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
 
AN ACT
  relating to authorization by the Texas Higher Education
  Coordinating Board for certain public junior colleges to offer
  baccalaureate degree programs.
         BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
         SECTION 1.  Section 130.0012, Education Code, is amended by
  adding Subsections (b-4) and (g-1) and amending Subsection (g) to
  read as follows:
         (b-4)  The coordinating board shall authorize a public
  junior college with a service area located wholly or partly in a
  county with a population of more than three million to offer a
  baccalaureate degree program in the field of applied technology. A
  degree program authorized under this subsection may be offered
  under an articulation agreement as provided by Section 29.908 with
  an early college education program located in the service area of
  the public junior college.
         (g)  Except as provided by Subsection (g-1), in [In] its
  recommendations to the legislature relating to state funding for
  public junior colleges, the coordinating board shall recommend that
  a public junior college receive substantially the same state
  support for junior-level and senior-level courses offered under
  this section as that provided to a general academic teaching
  institution for substantially similar courses.  In determining the
  contact hours attributable to students enrolled in a junior-level
  or senior-level course offered under this section used to determine
  a public junior college's proportionate share of state
  appropriations under Section 130.003, the coordinating board shall
  weigh those contact hours as necessary to provide the junior
  college the appropriate level of state support to the extent state
  funds for those courses are included in the appropriations.  This
  subsection does not prohibit the legislature from directly
  appropriating state funds to support junior-level and senior-level
  courses offered under this section.
         (g-1)  A degree program created under Subsection (b-4) may be
  funded only by a public junior college's proportionate share of
  state appropriations under Section 130.003, local funds, and
  private sources.  This subsection does not require the legislature
  to appropriate state funds to support a degree program created
  under Subsection (b-4).
         SECTION 2.  This Act takes effect September 1, 2017.