The holidays have come early for countless college students and prospective students in Texas as Texas Governor Greg Abbott mandated a freeze on college tuition through the 2026-27 academic year.
“When inflation and other economic pressures burden household budgets, our public universities must take every step possible to ease the financial burden on our students and their families,” Abbott said in a letter to higher education leaders in Texas.
For senior Avishi Singh, this proposal has the potential to benefit many students as well as open doors for those who previously didn’t have the option of college.
“I am strongly considering attending college in Texas, either at TAMU or UT Austin,” Singh said “In my opinion, tuition freezes are an effective way to draw in more applicants to a college, like Purdue has done with a frozen tuition cost for the past ten years or so. While it opens the door for affordability, it also frees up the ability for other expenses to increase.”
Abbott’s decision builds off of House Bill 1, or the General Appropriation Act, passed in 2023, which allocated a total of $700 million to public universities across the state in return for a two-year freeze on college tuition, extending through the 2024-25 academic year.
Essentially, this bill prevented colleges from raising tuition for students in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years beyond the tuition in 2023. Interestingly, the bill was passed in the wake of a proposal made by the chancellors of some of the largest Texas public university systems which offered to freeze tuition for 2 academic years in return for a $1 billion allocation of state funds for higher education.
For prospective students of public Texas universities, this tuition freeze alleviates the financial burden from not only themselves but their parents as well.
“I’ve always planned on staying in-state so my parents and I have been saving for that accordingly,” senior Nolan Sow said. “It would be so awful if I thought I was safe, financially, and then they hiked up the tuition costs.”
The new mandate continues this biennium, as Abbott expressed in a letter to the Chairman and Chancellor of University Systems, requiring public universities to keep tuition at 2023 levels through 2027.
“Last year I signed a law that prohibits increasing undergraduate tuition and fees for both the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 academic years,” Abbott said.. “As this tuition freeze expires, let me be clear: I will not support any tuition increase at any public higher education institution in the upcoming biennium. My office has spoken to the Board of Regents at every public university system, and we are in agreement that no institution in Texas should approve tuition increases for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 academic school years.”
Abbott’s extension on the mandate comes in the wake of continually high rates of inflation and an uptick in unemployment rates.
“Texans face significant rising costs due to inflation,” Abbott said. “When inflation and other economic pressures burden household budgets, our public universities must take every step possible to ease the financial burden on our students and their families.”
