Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Tuition Grants topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Tuition Grants Commission outlines stable grant funding, FAFSA portal rollout and operational asks
Summary
Tuition Grants Commission Executive Director Katie Stevens told the subcommittee the agency can maintain this year’s $5,000 tuition grants with lottery support, described a FAFSA completion portal and data center, recounted the Limestone University closure response and requested modest operational funding for staff and IT fee increases.
Katie Stevens, executive director of the Tuition Grants Commission, told the House Ways and Means subcommittee that the agency’s tuition‑grant program remains funded at current levels and that recent investments have allowed the Commission to raise the maximum grant to $5,000 for the academic year.
Stevens said the Commission receives a mix of recurring state appropriations and lottery funding (the Commission noted $20,000,000 annually from the lottery) and reported a FY26 program appropriation amount of roughly $47,560,000. She asked the legislature to concur with the governor’s recommendation to continue lottery funding and, if possible, consider moving lottery support to the general fund to provide a more stable disbursement schedule.
Stevens described the Commission’s response to the unexpected closure of Limestone University last May. The Commission launched a communications campaign to inform displaced tuition‑grant recipients they could transfer grants to other participating institutions; she said the Commission had transferred over 200 of about 600 tuition‑grant recipients to other schools and that many institutions offered seamless transfer and tuition‑matching options.
On outreach and data, Stevens reported the Commission implemented a FAFSA completion portal for high‑school counselors: after a pilot with 40 schools, 59 schools now have active users and the pilot schools were outpacing statewide FAFSA completion rates by several percentage points. She also announced a new public online data center (sttuitiongrants.org/data) with aggregate FAFSA and program reports.
Stevens requested modest recurring operational increases: a $95,000 increase in classified personnel to bring staff pay toward midpoint bands, funding to staff a vacant fifth FTE position (estimated beginning salary and benefits ~$69,000), and roughly $24,500 to cover a Department of Technology Operations (DTO) increase in IT support fees effective FY27. She noted the agency has no nonrecurring capital requests but asked for recurring support to reduce reliance on carry‑forward and to maintain transparency in personnel spending.
Representative members asked whether the Commission could provide more precise counts of Limestone students still seeking placements; Stevens said she would look into that with partner institutions. Stevens also described a recent residency‑policy review the Commission completed and said campus policies are being aligned with updated residency-determination guidance.
The Commission did not request additional scholarship dollars for next year beyond existing appropriations, but asked for operational stability and additional transparency mechanisms to support program administration and student outreach.
