Texas board takes up prepaid tuition prices two weeks before enrollment reopens

The board that runs the state’s prepaid college tuition plans meets Tuesday to set next year’s prices — about two weeks before enrollment reopens on September 1.

Families in the open plan, the Texas Tuition Promise Fund, buy “tuition units” rather than dollars. One hundred units cover a year of 30 credit hours at the most expensive public university in the state; fewer are needed anywhere cheaper. Units come in three grades, priced to that most expensive university, to the weighted average of Texas public universities, and to the in-district average at public two-year colleges. The current prices are $165.11, $115.89 and $32.15, and they barely moved from the year before. The plan held nearly $1.38 billion in assets across 40,737 contracts last August 31. Enrollment runs to the end of February, and to July 31 for babies under a year old.

The older plan matters to a smaller group in a more immediate way. The Texas Guaranteed Tuition Plan closed to new enrollment in 2003, after lawmakers let university regents set their own tuition, but about 11,800 contracts are still live. Tuesday’s vote on hourly reimbursement rates decides what those contracts pay this fall — the plan’s handbook says fall distributions cannot be processed until the board approves them. Used at the kind of school the contract was bought for, the plan covers actual tuition and required fees. Used anywhere else it pays a flat rate per credit hour set by the contract type, and the family owes any difference: $372.70 an hour for senior-college contracts, $129.32 for junior-college contracts and $1,115.12 for private-college contracts.

That plan carries the state’s credit behind it, under a constitutional amendment voters approved in 1997. It is now in surplus — $12.8 million, or 108.5 percent funded, as of August 31, 2025 — though the surplus shrank by about $2.5 million over the year, after the board cut its assumed investment return to 3.7 percent for 2026 and beyond, down from a declining schedule that had started at 4.8. Tuesday’s agenda includes a vote on the assumptions for the year now ending. That is a long way from 2013, when the Legislative Budget Board reported the plan 66 percent funded and projected it would run dry in 2019.

Tuesday is also the board’s first meeting since Don Huffines was sworn in as comptroller on August 1; Governor Greg Abbott appointed him to the vacancy and he is on the November ballot. By statute the comptroller presides. Three of the six appointed seats are held by members whose terms have expired, one of them since February 2019. Public comment comes near the end, three minutes a speaker.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Don Huffines — comptroller; presiding officer by statute.
• Sarina Davidson, Fort Worth — appointed by the governor, 2023.
• Umesh “Mike” Jain, Sugar Land — appointed by the lieutenant governor, 2025.
• Michele Purgason, Arlington — appointed 2018; term expired 2023.
• Judy Trevino, San Antonio — appointed by the governor, 2018.
• Jarrod Winkcompleck, Austin — appointed 2019; term expired 2023.
• Deborah Zuloaga, El Paso — appointed 2010; term expired 2019.

Appointee roster from the comptroller’s board page, last updated in January 2026; that page still names the previous acting comptroller as chair, so the chair here follows the comptroller’s own biography page instead. Texas appointees serve until replaced. Composition, the six-year staggered terms and the comptroller’s role as presiding officer are set by Education Code Chapter 54, Subchapter F. The board is staffed by the comptroller’s Educational Opportunities and Investments Division and also oversees the Texas College Savings Plan, the LoneStar 529 Plan and Texas ABLE. Staff contact for this meeting: Linda Fernandez, (800) 531-5441, ext. 3-4863.