The bill, currently in the House of Representatives, was designed by members of Congress to make universities more accountable for increasing tuition prices. The bill would treat an institution in Michigan the same way it would treat institutions in another state where higher education has consistently received funding increases, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said at a Faculty Council meeting Nov. 13.

“The provision does not make allowances for a state like Michigan, who has lost 25 percent of our purchasing power from the state,” Simon said.

Sylvia Warner, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, said the legislation is a comprehensive reauthorization of Higher Education Act, which is the primary federal law meant to expand college access for low- and middle-income students.

“(It) reauthorizes work study and math and science programs and requires numerous reporting requirements for endowment donations, campus crime (and) textbook costs,” she said.

Mark Burnham, the associate vice president for governmental affairs, said except for the tuition provision, there are several benefits to the bill.

“There are a lot of changes in the Federal Pell Grant Program,” he said. “It increases the maximum award to as much as $9,000 and it would create a year-round pell grant.”

Currently, pell grants, which provide aid to low-income students, are limited to academic semesters in the spring and the fall.

If the bill passes with the provision intact, it could force institutions to restrict their tuition increases to the point that they might have to delay maintenance on facilities, forgo hiring professors or not offer certain classes, Burnham said.

“The impact then translates pretty quickly into what students get for their dollars,” he said.

“You are either raising the tuition or cutting services.”

Burnham said the downside of the bill is that it doesn’t distinguish between public universities that are state-funded and private universities that aren’t.

“You could have a situation where the most expensive private institutions in the country could raise their tuition almost as much as (MSU’s) entire tuition currently is, and because it would be less than a five or six percent increase, they don’t get on the watch list,” he said.

If on the watch list, universities would have to report their efficiency with funding to the U.S. Secretary of Education

Simon said university Web sites provide basic consumer information to parents that is consistent across academic institutions to provide background on the university’s financial state.

Burnham said the bill is well-intentioned, but would negatively impact state universities like MSU, whose tuition is directly tied to a state in hard economic times.

In other situations, the tuition of state universities is set by the state Legislature, not by the universities, he said. The bill would establish penalties for decisions that are mostly handled outside the control of the university.

“It becomes very difficult to see how this will do more than create a list of institutions who are being shamed for their tuition situation,” Burnham said.

The House could vote on the bill in December, Burnham said. The House bill will then have to be in agreement with the Senate bill, which was passed in July, and does not have this provision.

“We are still trying to figure out what its impact will be, what it really means and how the Department of Education would actually implement it,” Burnham said.