A number of proposals have recently been passed through congress and signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant.
One of these was House Bill 1095, which has the potential to greatly affect the future of Mississippi State University. This law will allow individual universities to waive out-of-state tuitions fees.
Mick Bullock, communications director and spokesman for  Bryant, said the governor hopes to see great success come from this new law.
“Gov. Bryant believes this bill will help improve the access to higher education for others that may live outside of Mississippi,” Bullock said.
Bill Kibler, vice president for student affairs, said the law allows the president of each of the eight colleges in the state to develop a proposal, including a fiscal impact analysis, which they will present to the Institutions of Higher Learning Board for permission and authority to implement the plan.
Toby Barker, representative for the State of Mississippi, said this is a bill he has worked on for three years in the House of Representatives. It was passed through the House with a 120-0 vote. It then passed through the Senate and was signed by Bryant on March 30. The law will take effect on July 1.
Barker represents Hattiesburg, home of the University of Southern Mississippi. With such close ties to a university, he said he has heard for a while from college administrators about the need for such a law.
According to the Mississippi House of Representatives Weekly Summary from the week of March 5, Mississippi loses students to neighboring state schools that have similar policies intact each year. The goal of the law is to retain Mississippi students and attract out-of-state students who can bring in additional revenue.
Barker said almost 60 percent of the money it takes to support higher education in the state comes from student tuition dollars, so this additional revenue would greatly affect the universities.
Sally Doty, Mississippi Senator of District 39, said supporting this bill was a no-brainer.
“Recruiting college students has gotten much more competitive in the past few years,” Doty said. “I was happy to support the out-of-state tuition waiver, which will ultimately add more dollars to our university system.”
Barker said most of the best high school talent within Mississippi is poached by out-of-state universities. These universities look just as appealing to these high school students because they have had the ability to waive out-of-state tuitions fees in the past.
He said campuses near the Mississippi border such as MSU, the University of Southern Mississippi and Alcorn State University will now have the potential to go into nearby markets that might be across the state border to recruit good high school talent.
“This will bring good students into Mississippi who will make good alumni,” Barker said. “Also, when someone goes to college, sometimes they tend to stay there after they graduate. This has the potential to build our long-term human capital in the state, which is something we desperately need to do.”
The wording of the law leaves most of the decisions to each university in determining its own out-of-state tuition waiver. Barker said the waiver policies could be based on factors such as mileage from the campus, GPA or ACT score.
“We tried to give each university as much freedom as possible to design a waiver policy that would be most beneficial to them,” Barker said.
Kibler said it is too early in regard to the passing of this law to determine how it will affect MSU.
“It is premature for MSU to speculate about how this new law may impact our university specifically,” Kibler said. “Since MSU has not yet developed a plan or proposal, I cannot speculate about how this may impact our campus.”