FINAL BILL REPORT

SHB 492

                                   C 15 L 87

BYHouse Committee on Higher Education (originally sponsored by Representatives Heavey, Jacobsen, Allen, Prince, Unsoeld, Miller, Brough, Kremen and R. King) 

Continuing the authority to permit installment payments of tuition and fees.

House Committe on Higher Education

Senate Committee on Education

SYNOPSIS AS ENACTED

BACKGROUND:

In 1985, the legislature approved a bill authorizing state colleges and universities to offer students an optional plan for paying tuition and fees in advance, in monthly installments. Although state law requires institutions to transmit the operating fees they collect to the state treasurer within 35 days of receipt, institutions initiating a tuition installment plan were permitted to transmit operating fees to the treasurer within five days following the close of the appropriate quarter or semester.

Any institution implementing a tuition installment plan is required to report on the plan's effectiveness and administrative cost to the legislature by January 1, 1988.

Eighteen thousand dollars was appropriated for the 1985-87 biennium to Western Washington University to test the advance payment of tuition.  During the 1986-87 academic year, 820 students at Western received the sets of prepayment coupons needed to participate in the plan.

Institutional authority to offer a tuition installment plan expires on June 30, 1987, as does the authority to transmit operating fees collected under the program to the treasurer within five days of the close of the appropriate quarter or semester.

SUMMARY:

The June 30, 1987 expiration date on institutional authority to offer tuition installment plans is removed.  Also removed is the June 30, 1987 expiration date on authority to transmit operating fees collected through the program to the treasurer within five days of the close of the appropriate quarter or semester.

VOTES ON FINAL PASSAGE:

      House 97   0

      Senate    49     0

EFFECTIVE:June 30, 1987