Republican state lawmakers are tentatively filing bills to reign in the massive yet beloved TOPS program which will approach $300 million in costs next year, while preserving the tuition payments for seniors and their parents who have come to expect them.
The state has already run into trouble funding the program. TOPS is short $28 million this year, a gap schools absorbed as a budget cut.
TOPS began in 1998 at an initial cost of $54 million, It has more than quadrupled since then reaching $265 million this year, and legislators have tried for years to find a solution to its growing size.
Sen. Dan “Blade” Morrish R-Jennings pre-filed his bill for consideration in the regular session beginning March 14. It would raise the eligibility requirements for TOPS from a 20 to 21 on the ACT and from a 2.50 to 2.75 GPA. It would become effective for students graduating high school in the 2019-2020 school year
If the criteria were implemented today, the scholarships of 3,294 current students would be revoked.
Sujuan Boutte, the director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance, said the number of ineligibles could change as students learn about the new requirements.
“All of those 3,200 students could say, ‘Hey, I’m taking the ACT until I get a 21,’” she said.
Morrish said his bill will be just one of a “litany” of measures dealing with TOPS in the coming session.
“We are going to do something with TOPS,” Morrish vowed. “If [the cost] continues to climb, it’s going to go off a cliff and we won’t have it anymore.”
Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, said he introduced a nearly identical bill two years ago, but couldn’t find the votes for passage as the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, for whom the program is named, opposed it.
Some of the opposition Morrish will likely face is based on the estimation that students no longer qualifying for TOPS would be from low-income backgrounds who may be attending poorer performing schools, although Boutte did not have specific numbers on the income levels of affected families.
To take on that scenario, Donahue changed the bill to put some of the savings his proposal would create toward Pell Grants that are designed to help needy families in the state pay for college.
His solution last year would stop TOPS from increasing each time tuition increases, so students would pay the additional cost when tuition increased. That bill passed both houses before being vetoed by then-Gov. Bobby Jindal because said he would not “cap” TOPS.
“I always tried to explain that it wasn’t a cap, it was a baseline, but he never seemed to understand that,” Donahue said. “It was a little deep for him.”
Donahue is introducing his bill to decouple TOPS from tuition again this year, and it is expected to pass as Gov. John Bel Edwards, then the House minority leader, supported it last session.
Finding solutions to the rising costs of TOPS has proven difficult, and the bulk of the requirements and funding mechanisms have stayed the same in its 18-year existence, becoming a more expensive program each time tuition increases.
Rep. Julie Stokes, R-Kenner, said she would support Morrish’s bill, but threw in her two cents — a bill she plans to introduce Thursday that would change TOPS into a loan for students who fail to graduate. If passed, her solution would make the cost of tuition a loan for the first three years, and free the last year. If a student graduated, they would not have to pay any money back.
“So I’d rather see us incentivize them to stay in school and pass and then not to get into it if you’re not serious about it,” Stokes said. “Don’t just go to school if it’s free and you can go party a little bit. It’s going to revert to a loan if you’re not responsible with it.”
An income cap on TOPS has also been floated around the statehouse, although Republicans are hesitant to take a program away from middle class taxpayers, who, as Donahue put it, should “get some benefit from state government, also.”