In its battle against escalating tuition costs and exclusion from Gov. Ed Rendell's Pennsylvania Tuition Relief Act, the Pennsylvania Tuition Coalition will present state legislators with its first tuition policy proposal today.
Student leaders will leave Penn State today to meet with state representatives in Harrisburg to outline their ideas.
The proposal, which coalition executive director Justin Braz said has been in works for the past two months, aims to rectify rising tuition and problems associated with state appropriations.
"Our policy proposal is structured so it is amenable to all three levels: administration, state legislators and the governor's office," Braz (senior-sociology) said.
One of the proposal's goals is to include the four state-related schools -- Penn State, Temple University, Lincoln University and the University of Pittsburgh -- in Rendell's relief act, said Chris Smith, chairman of the subcommittee on policy creation for the coalition.
Rendell's plan would assist families with an income of $100,000 or less and would benefit students who attend the 14 State System of Higher Education schools or community colleges.
About 31,000 Penn State students would qualify for the state-issued aid if the university were included in Rendell's Tuition Relief Act.
While trying to remedy the situation, the coalition initially found if state-related schools were included in the plan, funds would be "too diluted" to make a difference, Smith (junior-political science) said.
However, the coalition has possibly created a solution that would allow the "original targets to be impacted greatly" and still give funding to the other universities like Penn State, Smith said.
The coalition's plan would attempt to decrease tuition costs, after Penn State financial aid, by an additional third of the remaining cost, said Smith, who is also the Interfraternity Council (IFC) vice president of standards.
"The plan is effective, but still aggressive ... It will hopefully be accepted by them," Smith said of state lawmakers.
The proposal also includes controls on tuition.
For example, if the state government provides a set minimum of appropriations funding to a university, then the university cannot raise tuition costs, Braz said.
However, if the minimum is not met, the university can increase tuition for that budgeting year to make up for the loss of funding from Harrisburg, he added.
Another stipulation of the proposal would be that the state could not raise tuition excessively more than the rate of inflation, Smith said. This was a control that lawmakers wanted to see in the proposal, the subcommitee chairman said.
Accompanying Braz and Smith to Harrisburg will be UPUA off-campus representative and coalition member Colleen Smith (freshman-biology) and coalition member and IFC president Luke Pierce.
Braz said he has a lot of confidence in the acceptance of the coalition's proposal.
"I think it will be received very well. We crafted it after meeting with many representatives in Harrisburg ... We tried to craft it to make sure it could be passable in house and senate," Braz said.
UPUA President Gavin Keirans (junior-business management), another member of the coalition, said he will not be going to Harrisburg today because of previously scheduled meetings.
