Monday, June 21, 2010

La. tuition increase bill given final passage - Boston.com

La. tuition increase bill given final passage

By Melinda Deslatte

Associated Press Writer / June 21, 2010

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BATON ROUGE, La.—Louisiana's higher education leaders won approval of their push to get authority to raise tuition up to 10 percent a year, with the House agreeing to give the bill final legislative passage.

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The 74-23 vote on Sunday sends the measure to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who supports it.

To get the tuition increases, the schools will have to agree to work on performance improvements, like increasing admission standards, improving graduation rates and boosting efforts to get students into jobs.

The proposal -- called the Louisiana GRAD Act -- will set up voluntary six-year agreements with colleges. They'll have to start showing demonstrated progress on the performance benchmarks by the 2012-13 school year or lose the tuition increases.

House Speaker Jim Tucker reluctantly went along with Senate changes to the bill that allowed colleges to get the tuition authority before showing the

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